


The Tenth Soul

by MarleyMortis



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: And being ostracized by your community, Captain America Steve Rogers, F/M, Graphic depictions of violence - Freeform, Healing from war, Homophobia, Howling Commandos - Freeform, Hydra, Impotence, M/M, Minor Character Death, Period Typical Homophobia, Pining, Rated M for violence not sex, Romani Bucky, Shrunkyclunks, Slow Burn, Stucky endgame, WWII, and torture, concentration camp, hydra are asshats
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-25
Updated: 2017-10-27
Packaged: 2019-01-22 17:39:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 32,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12487228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarleyMortis/pseuds/MarleyMortis
Summary: Captain America liberates Buchenwald Concentration Camp from Nazi rule and frees a Romani man named Bucky.  This is their journey towards friendship and healing.  They find themselves sharing a home and business in Germany after the war, and despite his growing feelings for Bucky, Steve can't bring himself to admit them.  After all, what person could want a man left broken by Project Rebirth?That's when Bucky meets Brock Rumlow and begins a relationship with him.  Things in the relationship go terribly wrong after Bucky agrees to meet Brock's family in Bavaria, and together, they must confront the remnants of Hydra.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my contribution to the Stucky Scary Bang.
> 
> Here is the prompt I chose to work with: Brock takes Bucky home to meet his family. Turns out his family is kinda weird and not what they seem. He finds out a little too late that anyone who Brock takes home doesn't really make it back. Brock's family is actually a cult called Hydra and they want Bucky to be a part of their collection (you choose what the collection is and what it's for). Maybe Steve could be Bucky's friend. They're both pining over each other, neither thinking the other wants the other. Bucky keeps Steve updated about the weirdness at Brock's family home. Steve gets suspicious and decides to go find Bucky. Will he make it in time, and even if he does, how will he get Bucky out safely? Race against time.
> 
> A huge thank you to [littleblackox](http://archiveofourown.org/users/littleblackfox/pseuds/littleblackfox/works) , who was so great about helping me find research materials on the Romani and always being open to my questions. I learned a great deal about the diverse cultures that make up the various branches of the Romani people and their plight before and after World War II. They're often overlooked as survivors of the Holocaust and have struggled since with getting recognition for the crimes committed against them and still endure persecution throughout the world.
> 
> This note is getting long, but the Holocaust is a very serious subject, and I hope I've captured a small snippet of it with all the respect it deserves. If I've gotten anything wrong, please feel free to point that out.

**Rosenheim, Germany: August 21, 1952**

A ringing phone jerks Steve from his dreams. He jolts upright, one hand rubbing sleep-crusted eyes while a sluggish brain attempts catching up with the rest of his body.

Another jarring chime comes from the kitchen.

Jumping from bed, he fumbles his way past the ice box.

“Hallo,” he slurs after pressing the handset against his ear.

Frantic breathing greets him.

He stands up straight, finally alert, and demands in German, “Who is this?”

More panting.

“Are you in trouble? Do you need help?”

A heartbeat passes in silence before the caller whines low into the phone. It's a soft sound, barely discernible through the labored quietude. Then, Bucky says in heavily accented English, “Help. Brock's family isn't--”

Low creaking interrupts Bucky.

Steve's entire world screeches to a standstill. “Where are you, Buck? Tell me your location. I'll come get you.” He's already thinking ten steps ahead, dreading the possibility the old Opel Laubfrosch truck parked in the alley won't start.

Scrabbling comes through the connection. Then silence.

“Take a deep breath for me, pal, and tell me where you are.”

Bucky doesn't say anything at first. His breathing gallops out of control, and it's the desperate sort of noise that indicates he's trying to be quiet.

Steve doesn't dare say anything for fear his voice coming through the handset will alert Bucky's attacker to his location. His fingers tighten around the cord connecting the handset to its base, knuckles white, shirt sleeves stretched tight across his biceps.

Then, Bucky gasps, “Fuck,” through their connection, and it's followed by a sudden explosion of shouting. Bucky screams. 

“Bucky!” he yells.

The connection goes dead.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Captain America's red, white, and blue was a garish eyesore against the gray landscape as he approached the gates of Buchenwald Labor Camp. The Howling Commandos flanked him. About two miles behind them, the bulk of the American forces waited for Steve's all clear.
> 
> Eerie silence thickened the atmosphere. Somewhere ahead, a flock of ravens scattered into the skies, causing his men to jump from the sudden explosion of sound and movement.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Depictions of people who were tortured and suffered during the Holocaust. Depictions of injuries, death, and war. Homophobia. 
> 
> "Vater" is the German word for "father." From what I read, German doesn't have a possessive apostrophe, so when I use "Vaters," it's deliberate. I didn't forget the apostrophe. The German word for "mother" is "mutter." If this is wrong, feel free to let me know, and I'll be happy to fix it.

**Buchenwald-- Five Miles Northwest Of Weimer, Germany April 11, 1945**

Captain America's red, white, and blue was a garish eyesore against the gray landscape as he approached the gates of Buchenwald Labor Camp. The Howling Commandos flanked him. About two miles behind them, the bulk of the American forces waited for Steve's all clear.

Eerie silence thickened the atmosphere. Somewhere ahead, a flock of ravens scattered into the skies, causing his men to jump from the sudden explosion of sound and movement.

No opposition greeted them as they approached the gate. They had been geared for resistance, guns loaded and cocked, fingers itchy to feel the press of triggers, but nothing moved aside from the ravens.

Gabe broke the pall, saying, “Word has it SS bastards have been fleeing camps before Allied forces can arrive. They execute all but the fittest and force the remaining to march across open country to their next stronghold.”

“They are attempting to cover their tracks,” Monty agreed.

Steve nodded in acceptance of their explanation then held his hand aloft to call for a halt once they were past the main gates. Dozens of buildings dotted the colorless landscape. The nicest of them were dedicated to administration and quarters for the SS guards. To the north of the site, he could make out reinforced fencing surrounding ordered rows of hastily-assembled buildings to house prisoners.

“Fan out. Nobody goes anywhere alone, fellas. Sweep the camp for survivors. If you find any, escort them to that factory.” He pointed toward a large building south of the prisoner barracks that seemed mostly intact.

After his men dispersed, Dernier and he strode toward the reinforced fence. He lifted a thick chain securing the gate, his jaw clenching at the heavy weight in his hand. As though the Germans needed something so substantial to prevent the escape of the weak and starved.

Dernier packed some gunpowder into the lock, and they both stepped back and covered their ears. The explosion was small, but such a jolt of noise overwhelmed the senses. Nearby, the sound of a child crying could be heard, but it was quickly hushed.

The chain fell to the ground with a clank. Iron shrieked in protest when he swung both gates open. 

He strode down a narrow path between the camp bathroom facilities and a row of housing units and rounded the corner into an open area that may have once been an exercise yard. Beyond that laid a garden where farming operations had been attempted.

The garden had been watered with the blood of humans. Bodies were strewn across the area, last minute executions the fleeing SS guards hadn't had the time to dispose of before the arrival of Captain America and the United States forces behind him. The kind of human depravity that resulted in such casual, mass violence would haunt his nightmares.

“Check them,” he breathed. “Someone might be alive. Someone has to be alive.”

He hurried forward to begin the process, fingers reaching for pulse points out of muscle memory rather than conscious thought. The first body, a young man who was mostly hip bones and ribs, was cold to the touch. The next body was cold to the touch. And the body after that.

Dernier's hand settled on Steve's wrist. “Captain,” he said with his French accent. “They are gone.”

“But someone might have survived. Someone has to have--” He reached for another skeletal frame, but the wave of revulsion he'd been swallowing down suddenly overcame his ability to control it. It was the kind of disgust that pulsed from his stomach in great, body-wracking heaves.

They were dead. All of them were dead.

Approaching footsteps yanked him back from the brink. The idea of allowing any of his men to march into the nightmare left him cold and shaken. They were hardened soldiers. They'd been held prisoner by Hydra, but the vision of death awaiting them wasn't anything a person could really be prepared for.

Gunfire barked nearby.

Dernier and Steve scrambled for cover. Steve pulled the shield from his back and presented it toward the direction the shot had come from. The barn. Someone moved in a window high in the barn that was slightly ajar, but it didn't make sense. SS soldiers wouldn't have locked themselves into the prisoner's camp and taken refuge in a barn when other locations were more defensible.

He returned his shield to its position and stepped from behind the building, hands in the air.

“Captain,” Dernier breathed. He followed it up by muttering, “Mon dieu.”

Another shot fired, the slug impacting against the dirt a couple of feet from his position.

“We come in peace. We're Americans,” he called out. When no response was forthcoming, he tried it in German. “Amerikaner.” Then, he indicated the red, white, and blue of his uniform.

Finally, the barn door cracked open, just enough for a single man to emerge. Clothes hanged from his body, and his head had been recently shaved. He approached with arms raised in surrender until he was several feet away, far enough he might have a chance at escaping if they attacked him.

When he spoke, his voice was like a rusted hinge, but his German was too rapid for Steve's rudimentary comprehension of the language.

“Dernier, go get Gabe.”

Gabe was a professional. He didn't react to the bodies surrounding them upon arrival. Rather, he clenched his jaw and focused on the task at hand, exchanging rapid German with the stranger.

“He asks us not to shoot. When they heard of impending liberation, they stormed the watchtowers to arm themselves and saved as many lives as they could. He says there are enemy forces who got left behind. They locked the remaining prisoners in the prisoner cramp and retreated to the SS Quarters.”

“Tell him to lead his people to the abandoned factory where they'll be given food, water, and medical care. Ask him if there are any other prisoners who might still be here?”

Gabe and the stranger spoke again, and Steve took the time to take in the stranger's condition. He wore a yellow triangle overlaid with a red and white target symbol to denote his status as a Jew. The target marked him as someone who'd attempted escape before. There were signs he'd once been a large and imposing man, but starvation had whittled him down to a skin suit draped poorly over too-large bones.

“He says there's a place next to the administration building where they took people. Men in white coats who called themselves doctors selected individuals, usually twins or others considered odd, and the rest of the camp would never see them again.”

Steve acknowledged the survivor with a nod. “Please tell him that other American soldiers will take care of him and his people when they reach the warehouse. I know he has no reason to trust us, but we won't hurt them. They've already been through enough.”

After Gabe relayed the information, Steve led the Howlers from the prisoner camp, crossed the road, and approached the SS Quarters, which were on the other side of the administration and hospital block.

Once they stuck their heads out in the open, several gunshots ruined the nearby brick and mortar. Heavy resistance followed. The enemy were holed up inside a building with narrow windows and had the advantage. Steve would need to cross an open field to reach them.

“Monty, Morita, cover us.”

“So what you're saying is we gotta protect your Grade A American asses while you high-tail it across open territory,” Morita said.

“Of course,” Dum Dum responded while giving his considerable backside a waggle. “You wouldn't want all this to be turned into Swiss cheese, would ya?”

“Course not. Wouldn't wanna ruin all that jiggle, Hot Stuff.”

“Gentlemen, perhaps this topic of conversation can be shelved for a later date?” asked Monty.

Steve slipped the shield onto his arm. “Dum Dum, Gabe, Dernier, stay behind me until we're close enough to take cover next to the building.”

That said, he presented his shield to the enemy and took off at a rapid clip. As soon as he emerged, slugs from a fifty caliber machine gun rattled against vibranium, but he couldn't allow them to bog down his forward momentum. If he stopped, the men behind him were dead.

So he didn't stop. He dug his feet into the ground with each forward step. Behind him, the sound of gunfire coming from Morita and Monty joined the fray. It was almost deafening. Between the gunshots and the wailing of metal against metal, his ears rang.

He picked up speed. Then he started running. Chatter from the SS guards intensified as it began to dawn on them Steve wasn't stopping. Moments later, they were under the shadow of the building's eaves, backs jammed against stone walls, hands damp on the grips of their service weapons.

“Hold your position,” Cap commanded. “I'm gonna find us a way in.”

Breathing heavily, Dum Dum said, “Almost thought you was gonna call us 'ladies.'”

“That would imply men are superior to ladies, and we all know that's not true, right? I mean, unless you'd like to take that argument up with Agent Carter.”

“Hell no, Cap. Don't wanna get my hand blown off by that firecracker.”

Grinning, Steve rounded the SS building looking for a way inside. The doors were locked, and the windows were barred, and things looked grim until he found a second story skylight that hadn't been closed properly. It allowed him to drop to the floor.

He offered the first of the SS troops he encountered the opportunity to surrender.

The soldier spat and replied in accented English, “Hail Hitler.”

Steve dodged an incoming attack and leveled the enemy combatant with a quick blow from the shield. Then, standing above the soldier, he replied, “Hitler can sit on it and spin.”

Turned out that once he'd infiltrated their defenses and unlocked a door to allow the others inside, the enemy wasn't so intimidating. They were just men with guns, same as the last facility the Howlers had raided. Same as the one before that, too. It was a matter of going from room to room and encountering pockets of fighting until the last enemy fell in the name of the ideology they'd sold their souls to.

Then the conflict was over.

His men were a bundle of adrenaline and nervous energy when they finally approached the hospital building to search for survivors. He stationed Morita, Dum Dum, and Monty outside. Morita was their youngest. For all Dum Dum's brawn and swagger, he was still painfully naive when it came to the horrors of war, and Monty had a daughter back home he had to worry about.

The door scraped open, and a blast of human rot wafted right in his face, making him choke and gag. Dernier wordlessly offered him a handkerchief which Steve pressed over his nose and mouth to filter the noxious fumes and entered.

Patients had been left in their beds by the retreating SS guards. Some of them were in the later stages of rot, proving they'd been left there long before the camp had been near the brink of liberation. Others were more recently deceased, but it was the living that made him choke on bile.

Each door became a test of will. They didn't know what they would find on the other side, but someone had look. Someone had to make sure there were no more living humans inside. Hell, lab rats wouldn't even be subjected to the types of experimentation being undertaken at the facility.

They found the first live patient on the second floor. Then came another. And another after that. They were men and women the Germans considered undesirable. People with dwarfism. People with mental handicaps. Twins, one used as a control subject while the other suffered the effects of failed vaccines or nameless operations. Homosexuals.

Steve went through each room, releasing the survivors from their chains and either carrying them as gently as possible into the main foyer or delegating their liberation to Gabe or Dernier. Both men looked grim but remained steadfast during the ordeal.

For some, help came too late. One emaciated woman died in Gabe's arms, moments away from help. A child coughed up blood, soaking the front of Dernier's uniform, only to die during examination. For others, there were tears and prayers of relief in numerous languages.

Steve was about to end the search when he spied one last area they hadn't explored. He sent Dernier and Gabe on ahead and broke the lock sealing the door closed. Stairs descended into darkness. He flicked on his flashlight and headed down, the air growing damp and moldy as he entered a basement.

A narrow hallway with doors on either side greeted him. Dread dampened his palms. He wanted to do everything but explore those rooms, but his morals wouldn't allow him to run away when people might be in desperate need.

Mostly, the rooms were filled with medical equipment, but some rooms became the final resting place of corpses, some sort of blue liquid having been forced into their veins until said veins were distended. Whatever the substance was, it quickened the various stages of decomposition.

Dry heaves hunched his shoulders as his body rebelled against the scent of death, and it was in the quiet between dry heaves that he heard a muffled sound from the next room. It was so low he almost passed it off as stress from the situation, but he had to look anyway.

The man he found inside was chained to his bed and lying in his own mess. He'd probably been that way for some time. His hair had been shaved at some point, and he was dressed in the standard prison uniform. Two patches were sewn to his shirt. The first was brown denoting a Romani. The second was pink, the mark of a homosexual.

The man looked dead, his cheeks gaunt, his chest sunken in, but cracked lips parted to release a quiet moan. It was that sound that spurred Steve into action. He didn't bother looking for a key, just snapped the locks on the man's chains. One arm beneath his knees, the other under his shoulders, Steve lifted the prisoner from his jail.

The man licked his lips in an attempt to moisten them. He spoke, but his words were foreign, a language Steve hadn't heard before. Arresting blue-gray eyes opened to gaze up at him. 

“It's over,” Steve said. “You're safe now. No one's gonna hurt you again.”

*

Days after being found, after the golden light of an angel carried him back into the sunlight, weakness still plagued Bucky. It wasn't just weakness. His body had nothing left. Even the simple act of raising a spoon to his mouth fatigued him, and all around came the jumble of American English. Most of the words were foreign to him, and only a few spoke a smattering of German.

A nurse stopped by his pallet with a tray of food, and he attempted to raise himself onto his elbows. The movement was too much for his frail body. He groaned through gritted teeth, but movement put added pressure on the open sores developed from lying in his own mess, forcing him to abandon the attempt. Vulnerable, his instincts screamed. He was too vulnerable.

The nurse was getting ready to sit to help him eat when the man everyone called Captain came, the same man who'd pulled Bucky out of Hell. Bucky realized he wasn't an angel at all, just a man with fresh lines etched into his face, a grim man who looked as though he'd seen the ancient washer woman wailing by the river to portend death.

Taking the tray, Captain sat, curling his legs beneath him, and set aside his own rations in favor of offering a spoonful of food to Bucky's mouth.

He accepted the offering and couldn't suppress a groan. Given the muck he'd been eating recently—when he'd received food at all—it tasted like Heaven. His thoughts immediately flew to Mutter. Food was important to his family. There had always been something bubbling over a fire to feed hungry mouths, and he had fond memories of listening to Mutter sing while preparing their meals.

Ravenous, he went back for another bite, but the captain hushed him while speaking foreign gibberish that made his head ache. He tried to say as much in Vlax-Romani and then in German, but the captain clearly didn't understand, and Bucky ceased his attempts in favor of eating at the dictated pace.

Captain didn't bother feeding himself until Bucky finished his portion. Setting the tray aside, he opened a box and spread out different tins and paper packets in methodical order. There were crackers, some chocolate, tins of meat, and sweet-smelling powder Captain dumped into a tin cup full of water.

It wasn't what food should be: savory and made with care. Bucky wondered that he was given hot food while Captain resorted to things packed in paper. The usual superiority of white men demanded things should have taken place the other way around, but Captain was different. Captain didn't look at him like he was something to be scraped from the bottom of his shoe. Maybe he didn't know better.

Throughout his companion's meal, they settled into a sort of camaraderie, Captain occasionally speaking his gibberish and Bucky allowing his attention to wander between Captain and the hustle and bustle of the rest of the camp. Maybe it was force of habit. Maybe it was because some part of him thought this might be a trap staged by the SS to test the loyalty of the prisoners. Whatever the reason, he tensed whenever another prisoner not wearing the pink badge moved past.

He was painfully aware he hadn't removed his own designations and could still remember the revulsion etched into familiar faces when a fellow prisoner had sold him out to their guards as being homosexual. People from his own community, people he'd once thought friends, turned their backs on him. They had labeled him a trouble-maker, forced him from the comfort of their presence.

Breath wheezed into his lungs. He rubbed both palms against the scratchy, wool blanket keeping him warm in an attempt to dry the dampness there. He'd expected to fight guards at the camp. Nothing had prepared him to fight other prisoners, too. He'd been young enough and attractive enough to find some protection against the in-fighting by giving desperate people access to his body, but being taken by the doctors had almost been a relief, at least until the pain had started.

He jerked away when Captain, done eating, reached toward him, frail body offering no defense should the stranger wish him harm. But it was Captain. Captain hadn't harmed him. Captain had freed him from his deathbed. Captain had eaten with him.

More of Captain's gibberish tumbled from soft lips.

Bucky responded with a helpless lift of his shoulders.

Captain beckoned a dark-skinned man over. Labor camps were a hodge-podge of people from different ethnicity groups, so seeing a black man didn't surprise him. What seemed unusual was how every other American in the vicinity was white.

The two exchanged words before the newcomer spoke in German. He introduced himself as Gabe and asked, “We need to know what was being done to you in the hospital ward.”

Bucky noticed Captain looking at the insides of his elbows where scars and fresh puncture holes shouted his mistreatment to the world. A sign of weakness could be used against him, so he rolled down the sleeves of his uniform to cover them.

“They put something in me.”

“Can you describe what it was?”

“Something blue. Herr Doktor Zola, the man in charge of us, put it into us, and it burned like Hellfire for days afterward. Then, a few days later, Herr Doktor Zola would return and take notes.”

Gabe translated for Captain's benefit, whose face tightened into a scowl Bucky interpreted as anger over his inability to offer more helpful information. He scooted away, pain flaring through his entire body, and pulled both knees against his chest.

“We're not angry with you,” Gabe hurried to explain. “What's your name?”

“Bucky.” Then, he sighed and corrected himself. “Bodo Baumer in Germany. Before that, Iacob Bartolomeu Bărbulescu in Romania.”

Once he'd heard the translation, Captain smiled, the handsome lines of his face softening, and said, “Bucky.” He pointed to himself and said, “Steve.” Then offered up his hand for a shake.

“Steve,” he acknowledged. Bucky gingerly accepted the offered hand, momentarily stunned by the differences between them, Steve's large and pale and his own frail and brown.

Gabe continued, “The Germans experimented on you?”

The word was foreign to him, even when spoken in German. “I do not understand this word. Experimented.” It felt clumsy on his own tongue.

“It's when someone does something to your body to see how you react.”

Humming, he considered the information before finally nodding.

Steve said something.

Gabe translated, “Would it be all right if the nurses took some of your blood to study?”

He didn't understand why anyone would want to look at his blood, but it wasn't his place to question them. At one point, he thought he might have denied the request. Allowing them to do unknown things to him made him feel unclean, but the Germans had trained him to acquiesce to any demands, so he obediently thrust his arm toward Gabe.

The examination wasn't difficult. They seemed to care whether or not he was in pain, and when he lost control of his breathing and cried out for them to stop, they did. They even gave him the room he needed to calm down before allowing the examination to continue.

Things devolved, though, when they asked him to roll onto his side. He did. Of course he did, having been primed to accept whatever their intentions were, but he reached back to pull his cheeks open as the doctors in the hospital often made him do. Humiliation caused heat to rush into his face, and he pressed it into the worn pillow beneath him.

Those sessions had always been the worst, the times they had attempted to cure him of homosexuality. One of the doctors had called it aversion therapy to make him associate attraction to men with pain.

But a warm, brown hand, touched his shoulder and Gabe, who hadn't left his side, said, “You don't need to do that, Bucky. The nurses want to change the dressings on your bed sores.”

That just humiliated him all the more, and by the time they were done and indicated he could roll back over, he refused, keeping himself buried in the safe haven of his musty pillow where they couldn't see his face. They couldn't know how shamed he felt.

“You're all right now,” Gabe cooed, his voice warm and his hand on Bucky's back a small comfort. “They're going to give you a shot now. It's a flu vaccine.”

“I don't know what that means,” he said miserably.

“It will keep you from getting the flu. Um. The flu is a very bad sickness that will make you fevered and ache all over, and it could kill you in your condition. Can they give you something to protect you from contracting the flu?”

He only understood half those words but nodded just to make them happy. The sting of it wasn't anything compared to the pains he'd already suffered, so he supposed it hadn't been a terrible thing.

That night, he slept on the same pallet he'd woken up in, a tent over his head and others more seriously injured serving as his companions. It was good. 

He didn't want to be near anyone else. He didn't want to see himself reflected in their emaciated frames and sunken eyes, in the way their skin had become papery thin, and the way the stench of misery followed them around. They weren't men anymore; they were ghosts, rickety skeletons ambling through the gray haze between life and death. They were weakness and want.

They were unclean, and everything inside him screamed to be away from them. Everything he'd been taught in his youth warred with the need to strip himself bare and wash away the pain, indignation, and homosexuality that made him like them.

Vaters voice pressed into his mind. _“You're not a man, Iacob. How could you have come from me when you're not a man?”_ Vaters fist had followed those words, painting Bucky blue and purple and angry red. Worse than that had been the way his elder brother, Abelard, had spat upon him.

It was too bad the German treatments hadn't worked, he thought. If they had, he could return to his people without feeling the overwhelming shame of disappointing them and dishonoring their heritage.

He didn't cry, though. His desiccated body didn't have enough moisture for tears. Rather, he curled himself into his blanket and shivered through the chill of the night, shivered until the rustle of someone coming inside the tent snapped him tense. He didn't dare look at first until the shuffling stopped.

Only then did he peek, finding Steve, no longer dressed in the garish uniform, stretching out beside him in a sleeping bag. He uttered a breathy “Gute nachte, Bucky” before hunkering down to sleep.

And Bucky? He remained corpse still, suspicion and uncertainty a razor inside his guts, but eventually, Steve's breath evened and soft snores emanated from him. The heat Steve radiated warmed Bucky to the point exhaustion overcame his trepidation.

*

Just a few days later, American forces gathered everyone into marching formation. Most of the camp survivors would need to march alongside the soldiers, but Bucky and several others who wouldn't withstand the strenuous journey on foot were loaded into transport trucks. He didn't like it, being forced to ride in close confines with so many others, but Gabe wouldn't hear his insistence that he could walk alongside the others. 

Riding in the truck gave him a prime view once they topped a hill to look back at the facility where he'd almost died. Part of him would haunt the ground for eternity. Part of him had died there. Seeing the place smoldering, the wooden structures set afire and some of the brick buildings pulled down by survivors, would stay with him the rest of his life.

More survivors died in the days that followed. Not a night passed where they didn't wake up to yet more corpses. Some succumbed to their malnourishment. Other died by well-meaning attempts to push too much solid food onto stomachs unused to digesting food too quickly. The doctor traveling with them caught onto this and stepped in to educate the soldiers about proper re-feeding.

Bucky, however, gained strength at an unprecedented rate. While the others floundered, he converted the nourishment given to them into fuel that saw him walking on his own before the week was out. The bed sores healed. The cough rattling in his lungs cleared up.

After three days of riding in the truck, Gabe agreed to let him walk with the rest of the refugees, but by the time they stopped for the night, he collapsed in a pile of bones waiting to be picked clean by buzzards. He was still painfully weak and had managed the last two miles on will power alone, driven by his vaters ire. _“You're weak. No son of mine should be so weak and womanly. I should have drowned you in a bucket the moment you came out of the womb.”_

Bucky remained where he'd fallen, lungs overworked, body trembling, until strong arms lifted him. He looked up into Steve's blue, blue eyes. Making eye contact with him should have been hard but wasn't. Something gentle filled Steve's gaze. It made Bucky float in a world where nothing could touch him.

He said in Vlax-Romani, _“You saved me. I would have died in that Hell without you. But something about you frightens me. I feel too safe around you. One day, you will hurt me. Everyone else has.”_

Steve couldn't understand him. He only smiled and pressed a canteen of water and a cup of bland rice and potted meat into Bucky's hands. Then, rising, he strolled away to see to someone else's needs.

Bucky watched him until he disappeared from sight.

For a while, he drifted, allowing himself to slip into his memories. Mutter handed down the traditions of their people. She taught them about purity and impurity, that they must not wash in stagnant water, as it meant sitting in the dirt cleaned from their bodies. She taught them about the impurity of a woman's lower half and how a woman must not walk between two men for fear of infecting them.

He wanted to remember the sound of her voice, the smell of onions and bread dough while she cooked. Sometimes he still heard her crying for him when they'd been separated, the women sent to a different camp while Vater and his brothers and him had been transported to Dachau. Rebekah, born just five years before the laws relocating Romani had passed, had wound up with them only because Vater had been carrying her on a sling on his back at the time.

So he recalled her lessons, Bucky, the youngest boy, perched on her lap while she told them about cleanliness being next to Godliness. They had adopted the Lutheran faith once they'd arrived in Germany and had been forced to learn all new religious dogma, but he hadn't minded, as it had meant being doted upon by Mutter.

Shuffling from his blankets, he made his way on wobbling steps to the edge of a lake nearby. Some of the soldiers had taken the opportunity earlier to bathe there. It wasn't ideal. The water wasn't running. He would have preferred a river or stream, but seeing as how he was already filthy, he didn't figure it would matter much in the grand scheme of things.

He neatly folded his prisoner uniform and left it on a rock before wading into the water. The cold shocked him and took his breath away. He could hardly stand it but forced hands to scoop up water that he poured over his naked body. It left behind smears of dirt and blood wherever the water touched. 

Eventually his rattling teeth stopped, and that allowed him to hear footsteps arriving from behind. He whipped around, his entire body protesting, and found Steve standing on the bank. He said something.

Gusting a breath at Steve's inability to remember he couldn't speak English, he flapped his fingers to mime talking and rolled his eyes.

Steve laughed. 

Bucky turned to face the lake again.

Moments later, water splashed behind him, and he became aware of Steve moving to stand abreast with him, body nude, water lapping around thighs. He stood quietly, face upturned.

There was something vulnerable about the whole thing, about standing beside Steve, whose body was the epitome of health and strength while he was little more than skin sagging over bones. Steve had a smattering of hair on his chest and lower down where it trailed into a nest surrounding his genitals.

Bucky didn't admire him as one might when sexually interested, but standing there without the armor of clothing allowed him to feel human again if not totally equal to the man standing beside him. They were just men, after all, with the same parts, separated only by the color of their skin and their life experiences, and for the first time, he didn't understand the differences between Romani and outsiders.

They said nothing. There was no need to speak.

*

In the weeks that followed, relief and joy bled into uncertainty and anger. As his health increased, his body and mind woke up after their long sleep and began processing the things forced upon him by Nazis. Not just Nazis, though. Eventually, the mass of refugees separated into distinct groups. 

The Jews. The Gentiles. Those with handicaps. They all learned to advocate for themselves with the American forces, but the Romani, absent a real leader to gather around, fell behind. One afternoon, he overheard a Rom speaking with the rabbi who'd been chosen to represent the Jews. The rabbi claimed that while the Romani had been treated unjustly, he was much too busy raising awareness about the plight of Jews to tackle the “gypsy” situation.

“Don't call us that,” Bucky snapped. “You people call us that like we're cockroaches. The Romani situation is the same as yours.”

“It is not the same. Our people were murdered because we're Jewish. Yours were murdered because--”

“Is there a problem here?” Gabe asked.

Fuming, Bucky worked his jaw back and forth, choking on the anger seething beneath his skin. What was wrong with people, he wondered, that once their shared misery was over, they started breaking down into smaller and smaller groups. The Gentiles turned on the Jews. The Jews turned on the Romani. The Vlax-Romani turned on the Sinti. The Sinti turned on the Kalderash.

Snarling, he stalked from the small gathering. Sure, he was angry at the Germans for terrorizing him, but he was also angry at his fellow prisoners for telling their captors he was homosexual to save their own hides. He was angry at his community and family for ostracizing him.

He didn't even know where the rest of his community and family were. The last family member he'd seen had been Rebekah, little seven year old Rebekah with her innocent eyes and bright laughter. He'd stolen for her. He'd murdered for her. He'd sold his body for extra food to keep her alive after Vater had been shot dead in the camp yard at Dachau.

Sometimes he still heard her screaming as she was swept away by a tide of other prisoners being forced into the death chamber where they would be gassed. Bucky had been part of the work crew assigned to remove the bodies afterward for disposal in a mass grave. He'd cradled her little body against his own.

That night had been his first and only attempt at taking his own life.

Sometimes his anger erupted explosively, and he got into fights with other refugees for the silliest of reasons. Sometimes it expressed passively in his apathy toward other humans by refusing to give his rations to someone needier than him. Even after he started gaining weight with regular meals.

He saw less and less of Steve and Gabe, which sent him spiraling into the blackest sort of depression, and he eventually got involved with a black market operation along with a few other refugees. They made off with used coffee grinds from the Americans, re-roasted it and sold it to surrounding civilians whenever they passed through a town.

It would have been fine except an MP caught him smuggling supplies off the base they were temporarily being housed at. That was the day he was marched in front of Steve again, Steve and some older man wearing a silver eagle. He knew that meant he was a colonel.

By that point, nearly two months had passed, and Bucky was rapidly gaining fluency in English. Steve seemed surprised to see him, but his mouth fell into a disappointed glower that had the strength to make Bucky flinch inside. Why Steve had that sort of affect on him, he couldn't be sure.

Colonel Phillips muttered something about not having the patience or man power to take care of a bunch of refugees who didn't know how to obey the law. “We'll have to charge him with theft of government property. If we don't make an example of this, the situation will get worse.”

“Sir, if I may speak?”

“You're going to anyway,” Phillips grouched.

“Did we really expect anything different? We liberated them but gave them no direction. They're living in squalor while Allied forces decide what to do with them. They have no jobs, no organization, and very little shelter. They're desperate people who are resorting to desperate measures.”

“Well, what the Hell do you want me to do about it, Rogers? I got a war to run.”

“I don't know,” admitted Steve. “But punishing a man who's been ripped away from his home and tortured isn't the solution. That much I know for certain.”

Phillips and Steve continued on that way long enough Bucky tuned them out. What he knew for certain was that a captain arguing with a colonel wasn't the usual sort of arrangement when it came to military structure. He might be dumb, but he wasn't stupid.

Eventually, Steve cleared his throat and crossed his arms over his chest. He asked, “Well? What do you say?”

Bucky was certain he looked confused. “What do I say to what?”

“Do you wanna become a Howling Commando? Get trained up? Have a chance to help us stop the spread of Naziism across the globe and hunt down Doctor Zola and the Red Skull?”

“Yes.” For the first time since his captivity by the Germans had begun, he stood straighter, with shoulders firm and his head high.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Saying goodbye to Bucky at North Field was one of the hardest things he'd done. Steve still had several years left in his contract, and Bucky had no desire to set foot on American soil.
> 
> It was with a heavy heart he hugged his Romani friend, touch lingering on the remnants of a wound marring the left side of Bucky's face. It would scar. They'd joked last night about Bucky's ugly mug while sharing a final drink with the Howlers in the officer's club.
> 
> “Take care of yourself,” Steve said.
> 
> “Who? Me? I always come out on top.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Gender bias in the workforce. Discussions of impotence. Minor character death.

**North Field, Tinian Island: September 29, 1945**

After the war in Germany had ended, after Steve and Bucky had stopped the launch of the Valkyrie and turned it over to military intelligence, after Red Skull had died with the shield embedded in his chest, the Howling Commandos had been shipped to the Pacific theater. Fighting there dragged on for some months longer, and it was some of the most brutal fighting Steve had ever imagined.

The Japanese knew how to hunker down, and it often times felt like every inch forward was purchased with too much blood and too many lives. It was the first time he'd seen the use of Napalm in war, and he could still remember skin sloughing away like melted butter when he tried to pull fellow soldiers out of harm's way. It was also the first time he'd witnessed Japanese civilians, convinced by their government they would be tortured and raped if taken captive, throw themselves off cliffs.

Hell, after finding out about the Asian internment camps in America and how Jim Morita's folks had been relocated to one of those camps, he couldn't say for certain the Japanese weren't right.

Then came Fat Man and Little Boy. He'd argued with top brass until he was hoarse to prevent those bombings. Howard and Peggy had raced across continents trying to stop Project Manhattan, but their efforts had failed. Howard wasn't the same after the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He blamed himself and his involvement in Project Manhattan.

The nuclear warheads and the internment of Japanese Americans were a turning point for Steve. It was the kind of warfare he hadn't signed up for. Some part of his idealism died the day the American government murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese who had nothing to do with their military's actions.

Bucky was the first to notice the change, Bucky who had been beside him ever since the day he'd been welcomed into the Howling Commandos. They'd become close friends during their service. The military had given Bucky the direction he'd been seeking.

But it was over. The Japanese surrendered.

Saying goodbye to Bucky at North Field was one of the hardest things he'd done. Steve still had several years left in his contract, and Bucky had no desire to set foot on American soil.

It was with a heavy heart he hugged his Romani friend, touch lingering on the remnants of a wound marring the left side of Bucky's face. It would scar. They'd joked last night about Bucky's ugly mug while sharing a final drink with the Howlers in the officer's club.

“Take care of yourself,” Steve said.

“Who? Me? I always come out on top.”

Something lingered between them, and Steve damn near let it roll off his tongue that he didn't know how he would live without Bucky. Sure, he had a thing going on with Peggy. He figured they would eventually get married. When they did, he would force himself to do his duty and provide her with children if she wanted them, but the idea of being with her like that...

He was pretty sure the serum had done something to him. Either that, or his youth filled with innumerable sicknesses meant he'd never developed the right way.

After their farewell, he boarded his plane to Hawaii. Bucky would catch another flight to Europe, and while they promised to keep in touch, Steve had this feeling in the pit of his gut that he'd never see Bucky again. That thought made him terribly sad.

New York held a ticker tape parade in his honor. He dressed up in the red, white, and blue and rode in a float through Times Square. The mayor of Brooklyn gave him a key to the city. Women cried. Men saluted. Everywhere, people celebrated the end of the war, but to Steve, it just felt like they were celebrating death. His life had been steeped in so much death he wanted to rip the helmet off and shout that no one should be cheering for humanity's greatest failing.

Eventually, Peggy moved to New York to be with him, and they were both assigned to the SSR's New York branch where the team he was given greeted him like a god. 

It made him feel small inside to be credited with winning the war. He wanted to remind them that he'd only been a tiny part of the bravery and sacrifice regular people had made. They should be saluting soldiers who'd come home missing limbs, brothers who'd lost brothers in the war. Not some cartoon character Senator Brandt had cooked up to sell war bonds. 

Still, he hunkered down and put his nose to the grind because he didn't know how else to do things without throwing himself into them one hundred percent. He rooted out threats and misconduct alongside people like Daniel Sousa and Jack Thompson. Sousa, he became fast friends with, but it was nothing that could replace the hole in his chest from missing Bucky.

Peggy got demoted once they were in New York, and he gritted his teeth every time someone sent her for a cup of coffee or put her to tasks that involved filing papers instead of catching bad guys. She rankled beneath the treatment. It was something he saw every day, and while he insisted she be assigned to his unit every damn time they deployed him, Roger Dooley, who had been tasked with leading the New York branch, wouldn't hear of a dame accompanying Captain America on missions.

“What would the world say about America if we sent a lady to fight our battles for us?” he exclaimed.

“It would say the American people are competent and judge talent based on merit rather than reproductive organs, Chief,” he spat.

That winter, Peggy and him caused a media scandal by getting a house together without the benefit of marriage. Things between them developed naturally. When she finally approached him about why he hadn't taken the next step in intimacy, he took her to bed, felt her lush curves beneath his palms, slid down her body and tongued her clit, but his cock didn't stir. He couldn't get an erection.

Frustrated with himself and his body, he sat up on the side of the bed and buried his face in his hands.

Peggy's hand settled on his back. “It's okay.”

“It's not,” he shouted. “I can't... God, I can't even satisfy you sexually. I can't make Dooley see reason, and I can't do my duty as your partner. I can't be a husband to you and give you children.”

“Who says I want children, Steve?”

“You're-- You know.”

That made her laugh. “Steven Rogers, possessing a womb and ovaries doesn't mean I want children.” Then, her voice smaller than before, she continued, “Do you not-- Am I not attractive to you?”

“No! God no. I mean, God yes. You are attractive. So attractive it hurts sometimes. Maybe the serum did something. We don't know all the side effects. Maybe I can't ever--”

Humming, she smoothed a hand over his back. “Darling, this isn't your fault. You haven't disappointed me. Not being able to-- Well, it doesn't make you less of a man. Men put too much importance on their genitals anyway, as though we women should swoon at the power of your virility.”

He finally unburied his face and looked over at her with a tiny smile. “Yeah, I guess we do.”

A month after that, he got into another blow out with Dooley and stormed from the SSR building to meet Peggy at the subway so they could catch a train home together. Exhaust was heavy in the air as they walked together, her arm looped through his. A delivery truck honked when they jogged across the street to the opposite sidewalk, the clack of Peggy's heels on concrete nearly drowned out by the noise of New York traffic.

Someone shouted at them, said they were living in sin and would answer to God for their adultery.

“You know, I didn't realize before the war just how awful people can be,” he commented as he settled a hand on the small of her back to escort her onto the train. 

“People should be ashamed of stuffing their noses in other people's business,” she agreed.

The train rumbled beneath them, and Steve grabbed a strap to steady himself, an arm looping around Peggy's waist to hold her steady against the swaying motion of the car surging down the tracks.

She broke the companionable silence by saying, “I received a call from Washington.”

“Hm?”

“Funding came through for Howard's project.”

“What was it again? Strategic Homeland Intelligence Emergency Liquidation Department?” At least he could still get a snicker out of her, and he took a moment to appreciate the gentle fragrance of her perfume and the way her body fit so well against his.

“Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division.”

“So Howard really wanted to name it something whose acronym was S.H.I.E.L.D.”

She chuckled again. “Perhaps.” Then she stilled and looked up at him. “He wants me to relocate to Washington to help him head the division.”

It took a few seconds for the information to hit home. When it did, he felt a swell of pride and excitement, and exclaimed, “Pegs, that's incredible! That's the type of position you deserve.”

“Steve.” Something plaintive in her voice stilled his excitement.

“Oh. You'll have to move to Washington.”

“As soon as possible, yes.”

“Then I'll ask for reassignment. Hell, maybe Howard would like to hire me as an agent of SHIELD.” Of course, he knew that wouldn't happen any time soon. He still had two years left on his military contract and had signed off on remaining with the New York division thinking Peggy and he would build their life in Manhattan. Trying to get a reassignment could take ages.

“Shit,” he sighed.

Nodding, she cupped his jaw. “Steve, I love what we have, but this is the opportunity of a lifetime. You understand, right?”

“Of course, Pegs.”

“And I won't be ready to settle down until things at S.H.I.E.L.D are stable and in working order. That could be years in the future. I don't want to hold you back, darling.”

“Are you breaking up with me?” He eased back and looked into her eyes for any hint of softness. What he found there was determination. The very thing he'd fallen in love with her for was tearing them apart, and he couldn't help but secretly wonder if it had something to do with his impotence.

“I'm saying that maintaining a long distance relationship will be complicated. Perhaps even impossible. It might be time we reevaluate what we want out of life.”

“This is it, then.”

“Steven, I don't--” 

“No, I understand. This is the kind of opportunity you don't turn down.”

“It's not,” she agreed. “Steven, I lo--”

“Please don't. When do you leave?”

The train lurched to a stop. Doors opened. A surge of people rushed past them. Steve experienced none of it, simply stood there with his body flush against Peggy's and gave her his full attention.

“The end of the week.”

“I'll put the house on the market and send you your half of the proceeds.”

“That sounds fine.” Her voice cracked a little. “Will you come to the station to see me off?”

He tried to smile, even managed a small one, and said, “Sure. You just let me know when.”

It was the second time someone important left him standing on the station platform watching them leave. The first had been Arnie, his best friend growing up, who had shipped out to a military base in New Jersey in the first round of drafting. He'd died on Omaha Beach.

God, he was really starting to hate Grand Central Station.

Things changed after Peggy left. He found fewer reasons to maintain a social life despite Daniel's rigorous attempts at getting him to go out for drinks. He threw himself into work, questioned less how the government used him to legitimize their actions, and before he knew it, another year had passed.

At the beginning of 1947, he was reassigned to a new division called Global Response and Defense. It was headed up by General Ross, who Steve liked in the beginning. Ross was approachable while still respecting military traditions. He seemed to take a personal interest in caring about his men, and Ross often invited Steve over on the weekends for family barbeques.

Things settled into a nice routine. He worked on missions defending America's interests overseas which required extensive travel. He got to see so many new places he hadn't visited during the war, and the missions were often so intense it left him no room to think about the trajectory of his life or how much he missed Bucky's solid presence beside him.

Best of all, signing onto GRD reunited him with the Howlers, minus Jim Morita, who'd refused to re-sign his contract after the war. Not that Steve could blame him. It would be hard to defend a country's interests when his parents had basically been arrested for being Japanese, parents who still struggled to rebuild their lives in a country that looked at them with suspicion. 

It was like Bucky had always said. Once the common enemy was defeated, infighting took its place.

In late October of 1947, Steve led the Howlers and a division of GRD soldiers into the wilderness of Sokovia, a landlocked country in southeastern Europe. Rebel forces were chipping away at the governmental structure there, which was headed up by President Petar Danielov.

Steve asked why they were invading a sovereign country and getting involved in a foreign civil war. General Ross indicated rebel forces had captured and were holding American humanitarian workers who'd gone to the region to distribute food and medical supplies to the war-ravaged citizens.

So the Howling Commands parachuted into the country in the middle of the night just outside the rebel-controlled town of Cominsk. Intelligence put rebel commanders, Pietro and Wanda Maximoff, making Cominsk their temporary command station. It was a sleepy little hamlet, and getting past the guards on watch proved frighteningly easy.

Things weren't terribly organized inside the town either, and it became pretty clear the rebellion was either on its last legs or couldn't really prove a threat to the Sokovian military, which brought to mind the question of why US forces were needed at all. Still, he had his orders, and the fighting turned brutal once their presence was noticed.

Rebels wielding an odd collection of German and Soviet weaponry poured out of surrounding houses. Dernier took a bullet to the kneecap before they could scramble under cover. Dum Dum slipped an arm around Dernier and dragged him behind an overturned wagon where they huddled while Monty and Steve returned fire.

“We should find the aide workers in the basement of the mercantile. Rollins, I need your unit in position near that water tower to cover our advance. Over.” Static came over the radio. “Rollins, do you read me?” Steve cursed standard military grade equipment and longed for Howard's inventions.

A Sokovian—he looked little better than a farmer and wasn't even holding his riffle properly—came barreling around the vehicle Steve took cover behind. He shot the man between the eyes, the metallic tang of blood lost amidst the smell of gunpowder and mud.

“Captain, come in. Over.” Rollins' voice spilled through the radio.

“Shit, where the Hell have you been?” He repeated his command of earlier, and once Rollins was in position with the rest of his men, they were able to catch the rebels in a crossfire.

It proved enough of a distraction for Steve to bail out from behind his cover and beat feet toward the mercantile. The building was ramshackle. People had long since looted whatever useable goods remained in the store.

Steve broke the lock on the basement and headed down, but the only thing he found were barrels of salted fish and dried commodities, things waiting to go on the shelf to be sold to consumers. He found no sign of any American aide workers.

“Cap, we need you above ground,” Monty called over the radio.

“On my way.”

He reversed direction and headed outside where GRD forces had converged on what had once been a medical clinic. The main pocket of fighting awaited him there, and he brought the shield into play by hiding behind it while creeping toward the door. Once there, he broke the hinges off.

Rebel forces poured out into the open once their base had been compromised, and Steve allowed muscle memory to take over. This was what he'd been built for, he realized. Fighting and death. War. They were the only things he was good for anymore.

Then a bullet whizzed past his face and struck a young man with platinum blond hair. He seemed shocked when the bullet ravaged his chest and lifted a hand to touch the blood already spilling from the wound. He stumbled. His knees went out from under him, and he collapsed. 

A red-haired woman released an inhuman sound and abandoned her position in the fighting to rush to his side and cradle him. She spoke in her native tongue, tears on her face, begging her brother not to leave her. Or at least that's how it sounded to Steve's untrained ears. 

Arresting her was easy. The fight had gone out of her.

As Rollins pulled her hands behind her back, Steve asked, “Where are the hostages?”

She spat at his feet.

“You started a rebellion against your own government, but that doesn't have to be your legacy. Tell me where the hostages are so they don't suffer a slow miserable death wherever you locked them away.”

“There are no hostages,” she said in accented English. “We aren't like Danielov. We aren't like you.”

Something felt wrong deep in his guts, but he couldn't put his finger on it. After checking on Dernier, who was in good spirits despite his injury, Steve ordered the entire town searched, but they came up with nothing. They found no hostages. They didn't even find any remnants of food or medical packaging that would indicate the rebels had used the supply of humanitarian aide.

The following day, Steve stood beside President Danielov during a public interview on the balcony of the presidential palace. Danielov spoke about loyalty and the protection of the many over the few. Steve spoke a few words Ross had written for him about how America supported the Sokovian government and would stand in alliance with the president and his cabinet.

He couldn't help but feel like he'd done something wrong. Bucky was always concerned about things like purity and impurity, cleanliness and uncleanliness. Steve got the slightest inkling of why when he couldn't wash off the feeling of dirt digging into his pours in the shower that night.

The next day, as he was leaving his hotel, someone brushed against him and slipped a piece of folded paper into his palm. Steve looked at it. It read “There were never any American captives. Your government lied to you.”

“Something wrong, Cap?” Dum Dum asked as they neared the military vehicle waiting to take them to the airport for their flight back to the United States.

“I don't know. Could be nothing.”

“Could be something?”

“Yeah.”

“Things sure ain't the way they used to be, huh? Back when we knew who our enemies were by the insignia on their uniforms. When a kraut was a kraut and an American was an American.”

Steve scowled. “Don't call them that. Half the people in the German army didn't want to be there. The other half were brainwashed by their leaders with propaganda.”

When he got back to Headquarters at Fort Bragg, he debriefed with General Ross, told him everything about the disorganization of the rebellion and how there wasn't any evidence relief workers were even on the ground in Sokovia. Ross just clapped him on the shoulder and told Steve he thought above his pay grade. Some orders just needed to be accepted.

Steve did not go to Ross' house that weekend for a cook out.

In fact, he took some much-deserved vacation time the following month, but instead of going to Hawaii or any other other of the usual places, he caught a flight back to Sokovia. The plane had just taken off when Gabe dropped into the empty seat beside him.

“What? You think we were going to let you have all the fun, Cap? Dum Dum said you might need some help on this one, and since he's up to his eyeballs keeping Ross distracted, we figured I was the best man for the job. There are black people in Europe, you know. Have been for hundreds of years.”

Steve laughed and rested his hand atop Gabe's, giving it a faint squeeze. “You didn't have to come.”

“The Hell I didn't. What the Hell would I tell Bucky if you went off to Sokovia by yourself and got your ass shot to Hell and back? I'm not answering to that guy. He's scary when he's angry.”

Steve laughed again and settled in for the remainder of the flight.

Honestly, Steve had no idea what he was looking for in Sokovia, and it was Gabe who brought his attention to the newspaper. It didn't take a genius like Stark to put things together once they read the article. As soon as GRD forces had left Sokovian soil, President Danielov and the parliament had passed a law granting mining rights to American companies.

That was bad enough, but the law also gave the Sokovian government the ability to claim eminent domain over hundreds of thousands of acres of mountain terrain and forests already owned by private citizens. Those citizens were in the process of being forced from their homes to make way for American mining companies to make a fortune on mountains rich with iron ore and precious metals.

“Shit fire,” Gabe breathed when they finished translating the documents from Russian. “I don't feel very good about this, Captain.”

“You and me both, pal.”

The following week they broke into the facility where Wanda Maximoff was imprisoned. It was laughably easy. Sokovia was far behind the times when it came to security. Breaking in wasn't the difficult part. That was convincing Wanda they were there to rescue her, something she was reluctant to believe given the circumstances.

In the end, she wanted freedom more than she wanted to make their lives miserable, and they fought their way from the facility and into the surrounding mountains. Wanda knew the mountains better than her keepers. She'd been born and reared in the mountains.

Steve found out the truth there, about how Pietro and Wanda had spearheaded a rebellion desperate to stop Danielov from stealing their land and selling Sokovian resources to American greed. It was there he realized they'd murdered a man, her twin brother, based on the orders of General Ross, who acted on the orders of the American government. It was there he realized he'd been used by the government, his symbol legitimizing the American presence in Sokovia.

He was sick. He carried that sickness home. It infected everything he did. He tried to get out of the military system, but they wouldn't let him until his contract ended. Ross threatened to have him thrown so deep in a military prison he'd never see the light of day if he didn't play ball, and if it was just Steve, he may have stood his ground and accepted prison for his ideals, but it wasn't just him. It was also Monty and Dum Dum and Dernier and Gabe, whose livelihoods Ross threatened.

So he served his time. He sold his soul to capitalism. He played like a good little puppet, but as soon as his contract ran out, he told the Secretary of Defense of kiss his ass when the man personally turned up on his doorstep in an attempt to strong-arm him into signing another contract.

Needless to say, that turned up in the newspapers the following day. “Captain America No Longer An American Patriot” and “Captain America Abandons Position as Defender of Freedom and Democracy” and “Captain America: Secretly A Communist?”

Peggy called him, offered him a job as an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D stationed overseas, but he was done playing the hero. He was done giving himself to America only to have his reputation called into question the minute he stepped out of line. He was just so done.

The very idea of settling down on American soil made him nauseous. Where could he go where he would escape the rumors being bandied about the country? So he packed his bags, emptied his checking and savings accounts, and left the country.

He tried leaving the shield and uniform behind on the bed in his previous home. It turned up a month or so later on the doorstep of his new residence in West Germany courtesy of Howard Stark.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky knew it when he saw it. Steve's letters hadn't done the place any justice. It was a Bavarian half-timbered style house with a steep roof, yellow walls, and its brown timber frame exposed to view. Exquisite old carvings decorated the exterior panels of the house. One depicted the Virgin Mary. While he wasn't much into religion these days, muscle movements made him stop and pay his respects.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Signs of PTSD from war. Mentions of the Nazi sterilization programs.

**Rosenheim, Germany: February 13, 1951**

Bucky knew it when he saw it. Steve's letters hadn't done the place any justice. It was a Bavarian half-timbered style house with a steep roof, yellow walls, and its brown timber frame exposed to view. Exquisite old carvings decorated the exterior panels of the house. One depicted the Virgin Mary. While he wasn't much into religion these days, muscle movements made him stop and pay his respects.

He'd existed in a kind of limbo over the last six years, ever since the end of the war when Steve and he had gone their separate ways. He'd spent a year looking for his mutter and siblings but hadn't found anything on their whereabouts or whether or not they were still alive. Concentration camps weren't known for having kept very good records. Auschwitz had at least marked their prisoners with tattooed serial numbers, but that idea hadn't spread to the other camps.

After giving it up as a lost cause, he'd settled for a while in Austria, but restlessness had driven him back into a nomadic lifestyle. He'd returned to Romania. His Romanes had been rusty, but the Romani who called Romania home were reclusive and terrified of outsiders. He'd found refuge in Mongolia for a while with some of the Steppe nomads, but they weren't his people. They weren't his family, and cultural differences had eventually driven him away.

The one good thing about the war had been his ability to reinvent himself. There was no one left who remembered that he was a homosexual, but he found himself increasingly bitter over being labeled a trouble maker and exiled from his community. So he'd spent the last year working at a vineyard in northern Italy until Steve had started responding to his letters.

Shouldering his duffel bag, he opened the front door. Bells jingled as it swung inward, and the scents of paint, paper, and coffee overwhelmed him in a pleasant sort of way. It felt homey inside, peaceful, and that was something he'd been desperately missing since the war.

In the back, he could see a blond tuft of hair moving amongst some bookshelves.

“Stevie? That you?”

The man stopped and stood on tip-toe to see over the bookshelf. He immediately cried, “Bucky!” and abandoned his work to rush into the front part of the shop to greet him.

Bucky didn't realize how much he'd missed Steve's hugs until the man gathered him close, tucked him safely between those thick arms that had carried him to freedom. Eyes closing, he savored the touch along with the scent of Steve's cologne mingling with whatever paints he'd been using that day.

“I thought you said your train didn't get in until tomorrow.”

The toe of his boot scuffed across the floor as he turned shy. “Managed to catch an earlier train. I would have called, but there weren't any working phones between the train station and here. Is it bad? I mean, should I have waited? Do you have company?”

“No! No, I'm so happy to see you, Buck. There aren't any customers right now, so let's get you upstairs where you can get settled.”

The place was crammed with wracks of papers in various colors and textures, bins filled with new paintbrushes, and old bushels stuffed to the brim with various tubes of paint. Tucked away in a corner near the register was located a small sitting area filled with old, leather armchairs and a round table, and against the same wall, he spied a coffee station where a fresh pot was just finishing percolating.

A set of wooden stairs in the back corner led to the first story. Even the stairs had been made use of for space, extra inventory and various, half-finished art projects stacked up on each step so they were forced to pick their way carefully upward. He felt grossly oversized for the space and couldn't imagine how Steve maneuvered the staircase so gracefully.

Someone—and by someone, he figured Steve—had painted a mural along the wall the stairs were built into. It depicted a forest scene. Deer dotted the landscape, and a lake rested in the center. Bucky's fingers itched to paint a flat cart and bender tent in the small field next to the lake, to populate it with the hardy Carpathian ponies his family had fled Romania with.

Thinking about them soured his mood, and he turned away from the mural to catch up with Steve, who awaited him at the top of the stairs. Beyond the door, he was welcomed into a small apartment by the scent of something bubbling on the stove. He inhaled deeply, causing his stomach to gurgle.

Steve cocked a smile. “You wanna get settled first or get something to eat?”

Bucky made a quiet humming noise. Eating was still a difficult subject for him even after so many years of freedom. Maybe his experiences should have made him a glutton, but more often than not, he found food problematic. The idea of eating with Steve turned his stomach.

“Where can I put my things?”

“Right through here.” Steve indicated a doorway that led into a small room. 

It contained a bed, neatly made, and an armoire that served as a closet. A stand held a wash basin behind which hanged a mirror. That would be enough for him to shave in the mornings. The room was tight, but it was more than he was used to.

Bucky swallowed and managed a smile for Steve. “Thank you.”

“I know it's small, but--”

“It's perfect.”

Steve maintained eye contact. There was something deeply settled and content about him that knocked Bucky off his axis. After Steve's letter detailing the events leading up to his move to Germany, he'd thought to find his friend in a much worse state, but peace fitted Steve like well-tailored suit.

Shock suddenly registered in Steve's eyes, and he reached for Bucky's face. The unexpected movement startled him into jerking away before contact could be made, and he touched himself where the scar should have been but no longer was.

“Your face. I thought for sure that last hit you took in combat would scar.”

He shrugged in response. “Guess I healed better than you thought.”

A jingle from the bell downstairs attracted Steve's attention, and he left him to unpack.

Bucky put away his meager belongings, just a few changes of clothing and a carved horse he'd bought from a fellow Rom at a street-side market. Fingertips caressed the cloth binding on a book he'd picked up in Switzerland, one that contained colorful pictures of birds and flowers. He settled his shaving kit by the porcelain basin and his brush on a tiny nightstand by the bed.

After, he pulled the curtain back enough to look out at the street below. Rosenheim was a quaint, old town, and while he didn't feel settled, he thought maybe he could given enough time. A tiny smile crept onto his expression. Family. A place to lay his head. Work to put coin in his pocket. What more did a Rom need? So what if his family consisted of an old military friend? Found family was as important as blood family.

Lazy thoughts carried him into the kitchen where he found an atrocious loaf of bread that was already beginning to mold. Deciding to make himself useful, he gathered the necessary ingredients and set about making a new loaf, thoughts of his mutter singing an old Romani song filling his head. Mutter had always been singing. Whether she'd been cleaning their cloths, tending the children, or cooking, there had always been a tune on her lips and a lively bounce in her step.

Until-- Until-- Until--

Fingers gripped the edge of the counter.

Next thing he knew, Steve called his name from the bottom of the stairs. Gasping, he whipped around and opened the door to peer down at Steve.

“I'm closing up shop now. There's a butcher a few blocks down. Want to go with me and pick up some ham to go with our soup?”

Leave? Walk out the door and leave behind the warmth inside the house?

His voice cracked. He cleared his throat and said, “I'm making bread.”

“Oh. You don't have to do that, Buck.”

“I want to.”

“Okay. I'll see you soon, then. Do you need anything while I'm out?”

He shook his head in response and closed the door to return to his rising dough.

*

Having Bucky around was easy to get used to. The guy hardly made a sound most days. Sometimes, the only reason Steve knew his friend even lived there was from the constant supply of fresh bread. Often, he heard Bucky up and about before the sun rose, kneading his dough, letting it rise, kneading it again. Then the house filled with the scent of baking bread and coffee.

Other mornings, he woke to a plate of French toast made from the remains of yesterday's crusty bread. He tried to tell Bucky he didn't have to cook, but Bucky's response was always “I want to.” Maybe it made him feel like he was contributing. Maybe it was a way for him to begin processing the things they'd seen and done in Europe.

Whatever the reason, Bucky fit into Steve's daily life like their edges were made for each other. It was nice to have someone to come home to after a long day painting in the shop below. It was nice to hear Bucky humming under his breath, and that man had a wealth of songs to choose from. Steve figured it had something to do with Bucky's heritage, but he never talked about his past of family.

So Steve's life fell into a nice routine. He painted. He sold art supplies. Sometimes he sold his own paintings. He made coffee and kept the books and did the shopping. It was a good life. Content blossomed inside him the more they learned how to live with each other.

Then, one morning in mid May, he glanced up from his easel to see Bucky picking his way down the narrow staircase with a cup of coffee and a plate of something that smelled delicious. He glanced up and greeted the man with a smile. It was the first time Bucky had left the apartment since his arrival.

“Hey, there,” Steve greeted in a soft voice.

Bucky blushed. “You didn't come up for lunch.”

“Is it lunch time already?” He tore his glance away from Bucky to look at the clock. He'd been so engrossed with his current project that time had gotten away from him, so after stowing his paint brushes and covering his pallet to keep the paint from drying out, he scrubbed his hands on a stained rag and accepted the things Bucky had brought for him. “This smells delicious,” he murmured.

“It is Cozonac, Romanian sweet bread with walnuts. Mutter, she used to bake Cozonac every Christmas to celebrate the birth of Christ. When I was young-- I was the youngest boy. Mutter doted on me. She would let me help with the baking and cooking. Vater, he blamed Mutter for making me-- For making me--”

Steve didn't like touching Bucky without asking permission after his initial misstep, so he didn't immediately reach to give comfort for what was obviously a difficult subject. Instead, he scooted over on the bench and patted the spot next to him to invite Bucky to sit.

Bucky did, their shoulders brushing.

“I'll never know what happened to them.” The man twisted something tied around his wrist. 

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Bucky shook his head.

“That's fine. You don't have to, but if you ever wanted to, I'm here and willing to listen.”

A colorful bracelet encircled his friend's wrist, threads woven in a rainbow of colors depicting various flowers. It was a vibrant garden full of life and beauty, the very thing he wanted for Bucky.

“Where did you get that? It's lovely.” He bumped their shoulders and indicated the bracelet.

“Made it.”

“You made that? Can I see?” He leaned closer when his friend lifted his hand to allow him a better look. The flowers were dainty, crafted with such detail they nearly came alive. “Would you ever consider selling something like this? I mean here, in the shop. You could make a few bracelets and see if customers are interested.”

“It's not good enough to sell.”

“I disagree. Bucky, this is phenomenal work. The intricacy of the weaving is incredible.”

“It isn't weaving. People in Romania call it point lace. Some call it tatting. I do it with needles and thread. Some people use bobbins.”

Steve glanced into Bucky's eyes again. “You do this with a needle and thread?”

His companion nodded, a blush working its way onto the apples of his cheeks.

“Thank you for showing me.”

The way Bucky looked at him, full of intensity and something incredibly fond, made Steve think he was about to be kissed. His tongue darted out to moisten his lips. The thought of Bucky's lips against his? It startled something loose deep inside him, a longing he'd never felt before. He glanced quickly away. Kissing a man wasn't-- It wasn't right? But he could hardly deny the sudden yearning resting low in his stomach, the desire to feel and taste and explore, the craving to have Bucky's rough stubble pressed against his own chin and cheeks.

He made eye contact again, and Bucky's pupils slowly dilated only to be replaced with a dawning horror that made him flee back up the stairs into the apartment. Moments later, the door to the guest bedroom banged shut.

Of course. After everything that had happened to him in Buchenwald? Steve could hardly blame him for reacting the way he had to what might have been an impending kiss. Stupid. He was ten thousand times a fool for ever entertaining the idea. What man like Bucky would ever want someone damaged when he could have the world?

*

Screaming woke Bucky from tentative sleep. Someone screamed like their guts were being ripped out. He bolted upright, groggy.

Seconds passed before he tracked the sound to Steve's bedroom. Fear sent him scrambling from his room and dashing across the common area, through the kitchen, and to Steve's private space where he wrenched the door open. Surely someone had sneaked into the house and was killing him.

That was not the case. Steve was alone. His body strained against the enveloping coverlet. Sweat dripped down his brow. A crimson flush stained his face, which was cut with lines of terror and misery. 

Bucky loped across the floor, unsure how he could help or if he should. Some people said that waking a man from his nightmares could leave his soul trapped in the world of the damned, so he hesitated, hand outstretched and shaking from the terror with which he'd woken.

With a final, heaving shout, Steve surged into a seated position, a knife clutched in his hand that he must have kept under his pillow. His eyes were wild as his glance swung around the room. It landed on Bucky, and Steve reacted to what he must perceive as an intruder. He swung the knife.

Scrambling away didn't save him from a long, shallow cut along his forearm. He pressed himself into the corner and held up both hands as a sign of surrender. “Steve. It's me. It's Bucky. You're safe.”

The tone of Steve's breathing changed. “Bucky?” Then, he leaned over to switch on the bedside lamp, flooding the room with light. “Jesus Christ, I thought you were a Nazi. Fuck.”

A beat passed.

“Oh my God, you're bleeding.” Steve glanced between Bucky and the knife clutched in his own hand. He dropped it like a hot rock and surged off the bed. “Shit. Fuck. I did that. I hurt you. Here, let me...” He reached for Bucky.

Bucky pulled back. “It's okay. I'll take care of it.”

“It's not okay!”

“Steve, you were having a nightmare. I shouldn't have startled you.”

“I hurt you, Buck,” he spat.

“It was an accident.”

“That doesn't make it all right.”

Another beat passed.

“I forgive you.”

“You shouldn't.”

“That's for me to decide.”

Another beat passed.

Bucky continued, “I'm going to get cleaned up and dress this injury.”

“Can I help?”

He paused. Normally, the idea of anyone's hands all over him while he was vulnerable made his skin crawl, but he suspected Steve needed to be allowed to help, that he wouldn't settle down until he'd done something to assuage his own conscience.

“Fine. Bathroom.”

He sat on the edge of the tub and waited while Steve dug out first aide supplies. Covering the pocked scars that lingered on the inside of his elbow wasn't possible what with the wound's location, and he barely kept from flinching away when Steve touched one. Sometimes he felt the phantom pain of the fire licking inside his skin.

*

A few days after his nightmare, Bucky dropping a handful of bracelets in his lap startled Steve from concentrating on a sketch. They were beautiful, each intricately designed and with the same careful skill displayed in the one wrapped permanently around Bucky's wrist. Grinning, he used the opportunity to inspect the injury. It was healing much faster than it should have.

Frowning, Steve made eye contact only for Bucky to shrug, roll down his sleeve, and head into the kitchen to finish up the breakfast dishes.

The bracelets sold within two days, and he approached his housemate about making more. 

Bucky seemed startled by the conversation, as though he couldn't believe anyone would be interested in his craft. When asked why, he responded in a quiet voice, head bowed low. “It feels strange being good at something.” And then, “No one has ever told me I'm good at anything.”

Heartbroken, he leaned forward and pulled Bucky into a hug, who flinched, body tensing. Several moments passed before Bucky's arms wound around his waist.

Steve wanted to hold him tightly enough to squeeze all the bad out, wanted to reassure him he was the best. Instead of that, he hummed the tune Bucky had been singing lately. Surprise lit up Bucky's face.

They stepped back from each other, and Steve dug into his pocket and produced the deutsche marks earned through the sale of the bracelets. He pushed them into Bucky's hand.

“I can't take this.”

“Your work earned them.”

“You let me live here without paying my fair share.”

“Please, take it.”

“I don't want to.” Silence. Then Bucky said, “Do you know what they will say about me? That I am gypsy.” He shuddered at the word. “That I live here on your generosity. That a gypsy is no good for anything but taking. That I take and take and take without-- You must keep it.”

“I don't understand, Buck.”

“You can't.”

“Then make more. Come downstairs and let people watch you creating so much beauty. We'll sell your work together, and they'll realize what a remarkable person you are.”

The last thing he expected was the sight of Bucky wracked by shivers. He shut down. He wrapped arms around himself and retreated into the nearest corner where he shook and shook like a dead branch in a violent breeze.

“Buck.” Steve approached, but the closer he got, the harder Bucky shook, so he held his current position, feeling utterly useless over his inability to help his friend.

“They can't see me. I won't let them see me. The Germans, they will come again. They will--” His comment ended in a sharp gasp, and he sank onto his haunches. “Please, don't make me leave. Don't. I like it here. It's warm here. Don't make me go outside.”

“Hey, it's okay.” Steve crouched so as not to hover over Bucky. “Buck, you're okay. It's over. What they did to you is over.”

“It'll never be over,” hissed Bucky. “Don't you understand? It will never be over. It will live here,” he said while he thumped his chest, “for the rest of my life, until the last person who experienced that place has finally gone to ash.”

“Okay. You're right. I'm sorry. I can't imagine what stories your body could tell. But maybe one day you'll feel whole enough to give them a chance. The people here are good people.”

“So were the people who spat on us and forced us to leave our camp to find new places to settle.”

That conversation stayed with Steve for weeks afterward. He couldn't comprehend the type of person who could persecute someone for being different. Something that made complete sense to him—that every person was born equal and deserved equal opportunity—didn't always make sense to other people. He couldn't fathom the mind that devalued someone because of their skin tone or beliefs.

So things went on. Bucky remained inside. Sometimes Steve would see him looking longingly out the back window toward the distant forest, toward the green, green grass of the park at the center of town. The sadness in Bucky's eyes soured in his stomach, but every prompt that would have gotten Bucky out of the apartment went unheard. Every request that Bucky come downstairs and enjoy the better lighting from the large windows at the front of the house remained unanswered. 

It was like Bucky had become a ghost, a ghost haunting the life he wouldn't or couldn't allow himself to live, and Steve began to despair. He didn't really understand until he walked upstairs after closing up shop and heard the German radio broadcast Bucky listened to.

Two commentators talked about the compensation laws being passed throughout the country that would compensate the survivors of Nazism. Naturally, judges found that the Jews had been targeted for their race and deserved the highest level of compensation. The Romani were only mentioned once, when one man stated as factual that Gypsies weren't persecuted for racial motives but due to their antisocial and criminal behavior and would therefore not receive compensation.

Bucky, who nibbled on his knuckles, looked pale. He turned on a heel and hurried toward his room, only stopping when Steve called out to him.

“They're wrong, Buck. You're not a thief. You're not antisocial.”

“Tell that to the authorities. Tell it to the Germans who drive us away and spit on us.”

“I will. I'll tell it to everyone who will listen.”

Cynical as always, Bucky disappeared into his room, locking the door behind him.

And there wasn't anything Steve could do. He was one voice. One voice couldn't change the flow of history, but he could try to coax his friend out of his room, and whenever Bucky refused, he could leave a tray of food outside his door and give him the space he needed to grieve.

Then came the accident. It happened on a Sunday as Steve walked down the narrow, winding streets on his way home from church. A car's brakes went out coming down the hill. The woman inside screamed, terrified by the car's imminent collision with a delivery van.

Steve reacted without giving the situation much through. He jumped atop the car and used his weight and an explosion of strength to rock it onto its side, but that didn't stop the momentum that saw the car continuing to slide across the cobblestones. When it finally stopped, Steve was pinned between the vehicle and a street lamp.

*

Bucky hovered at the edge of the doorway. The commotion outside had brought him down from the apartment, but going to investigate meant leaving the building, something he hadn't managed since first arriving. Instead, he remained just inside and out of sight of the growing crowd.

He didn't realize the full extent of the accident until he saw a head of blond hair, some tufts turning pink with blood. Fear seized his heart. He took a step toward the open door but hesitated. A whisper of his younger self urged him to take that step. He wasn't a coward. He'd survived his vaters disappointment with him. He'd survived the beatings by his elder brothers. He'd survived the Third fucking Reich. He could take one goddamn step for his friend.

Breath stuttering and hands shaking, he stepped over the threshold. Lightning didn't bolt down from the heavens. No one screamed and pointed. It was like they didn't know, like they couldn't see he was different. Something swelled inside him, a mixture of fear and euphoria.

Then he took off running. Other people had arrived before him and worked to clear the wreckage. A woman with graying hair knelt beside Steve and held his hand, using her other in an attempt to staunch the flow of blood from Steve's ribs.

“Steve!” Bucky went down on his knees beside his friend.

“Bucky. It's all right. I'm gonna be fine.”

Bucky didn't believe him, not when Steve's voice slurred and his eyes turned glassy. Steve heaved a breath. His chest stilled.

Terror snaked its way into Bucky's guts, and he didn't realize the woman was shouting at him until she touched his elbow.

“Hold this. Keep pressure on this.”

He glanced at her, his sluggish brain having a hard time understanding, so she took both of his hands and pressed them atop the jacket she was using to staunch the blood flow.

She tilted Steve's head back, pinched off his nose, and blew a breath that inflated his chest. Seeing her dark brown skin against the white of Steve's dress shirt pulled his attention into a place of calm. As long as he focused on that instead of the red staining his friend's clothes, everything would be fine.

She pumped her fists against Steve's sternum and breathed for him again. A third time. A fourth. Then Steve sucked in a deep breath and shouted from his numerous injuries.

Eventually, someone brought a team of horses—cars were common in the area, but horses even more so—and hitched them to the disabled vehicle. The horses strained under the weight of the car. There was a grating sound as metal finally slid against stone, and Steve sagged.

By that point, someone had alerted the doctor, who came hurrying into the area. The scathing look he settled on the woman turned Bucky's stomach. She wasn't immune to the stare and quickly retreated to a safer distance, Bucky refusing to relinquish his hold on the jacket.

He figured that would be the last he saw of her and was therefore startled when she came calling the following day after Steve had been released from the doctor's care and sent to recover at home. Opening the door to a stranger took much longer than it should have, but his tension eased when he saw her standing on the stoop outside the side entrance that led directly up to the apartment.

“I wanted to check on Mr. Rogers,” she said in German.

“Yes. Please, come up. He'll be glad to see you.”

He led her upstairs and into the common room where Steve was taking up the entirety of the sofa. “Would you like coffee?”

“Please.”

Bucky walked through the archway into their small kitchen and put a fresh pot on. Then, he moved to lean against the door jamb and watched Steve and their guest together, their heads bowed, Steve grasping both her hands as they exchanged earnest words.

Steve asked, “What's your name?”

“Inge Amsel. You're the American, Steve Rogers. You helped liberate Germany from Hydra.”

“I was one part of a whole team that helped liberate Germany from Hydra.” Steve's glance moved across the room to Bucky.

“You are the Rom taken in by the Americans after Buchenwald.”

Apprehension flooded his veins. “How did you know that?”

“My father, he operated an underground press during the regime. I read a lot before the Germans came. Before they found us and shot my father for sedition. They needed no reason other than the color of our skin. Did you know that Hitler wrote that the Jews brought us from Africa to pollute the German population?” She touched her abdomen, then, and got a far-away look in her eyes.

“You were taken to a camp?” Bucky brought the coffee pot and several mugs out on a tray and settled them on the table before sitting in an armchair.

“No, not there. My sisters and I were taken to a hospital. They sterilized us.” She spoke without hesitation, as though she was merely stating facts that had happened to someone else in some distant period of time.

Steve cursed under his breath only to apologize for his language.

A smile softened the angular structure of her face. “Such a gentleman.”

Inge stayed and talked for more than an hour. Bucky found himself enjoying her presence. She wasn't given to fits of extremes but kept an even personality that he found calming. She was intelligent and worked as a nurse for a black doctor that brought much-needed medical care to minorities in the region. Pro-Aryan sympathies didn't just disappear overnight, not after the population had been bombarded with Nazi propaganda for the better part of a decade.

By the time she left, they had already invited her for dinner the following week, and Bucky had taken to her despite his own fear of outsiders. Maybe it was because she was different, too.

See, there were numerous words he'd picked up from the various labor camps where he'd been stationed. One of them was the Jewish word for outsiders: Gentiles. There were Jews, and then there were Gentiles. It was the same with the Romani. There were Romani. Then there were Gentiles.

Romani way of life was slowly disappearing. Romani cultural heritage was being watered down, and with that, increased the sense of “us” versus “them.” Protection could only be assured by drawing inward and holding fast to the old traditions.

He could still hear Vater screaming, _“You will marry a Romani girl and produce Romani children. You will do your duty to your ancestors and keep the Romani way of life alive.”_

Being rounded up and relocated to the pit of Hell certainly hadn't helped his natural wariness to outsiders. Either they would hurt him the way Germans hurt him or they wouldn't look past his Romani heritage and spit on him.

Steve calling his name pulled him from his thoughts, and he hurried back to the common area.

“You know I'll heal fast from this, but I'm gonna have to close the shop for a few days while I recover. Could you go downstairs and put the sign up? We'll lose a lot of income, but until I can stand without passing out, I won't be able to look after the place.”

Bucky ducked his head, guilt and uncertainty a tidal wave in his stomach, fingers curling and uncurling around the damp wash cloth he'd been using to do dishes. “I could keep shop for you?”

“You mean that?”

“Yes. I suppose.”

“Buck, that would be incredible. Thank you.”

The praise washed down Bucky's spine like a spring rain, and he made eye contact. For a moment, he became lost in the depths of his friend's eyes. They were so startlingly blue it almost hurt to look at them. A jolt of electricity zinged through his pelvis, destroying the moment of peace.

No, he couldn't feel that way about Steve. Steve didn't feel that way about him, and it was a miracle in itself that Steve allowed him to live in the apartment despite knowing he was perverse. To feel that way was dangerous. It could get him kicked into the streets or killed, so he pushed it down, trampled on it like a bare-footed girl, skirt tucked into her belt, stamping on dirty clothes in sudsy water.

So he kept his mouth shut. He made dinner. He helped Steve to wash and go to bed, and in the morning, he got up extra early to have coffee and breakfast done in time to tromp downstairs and open the shop, the tremble in his hands pronounced.

*

Minding a shop brought up remembrances of stories passed around the barracks at Buchenwald. There had been the educated men, enemies of the Nazi regime caught spreading information to the population. There had been the underprivileged, those born with hereditary diseases or dysfunctions the Nazis thought to purge from the gene pool. There had been the asocial people, like the Romani, who kept to themselves and refused to give up their cultural identity to become German. There had been the criminals, the vagrants, the homosexuals. Then there had been the Jews.

He'd heard stories, so many traditions as people fought to lean into the comfort of their faith during the tribulation. One of the stories that stayed with him belonged to a Jew who dreamed of being an engineer or a scientist but knew deep down he would become a shopkeeper just like his father. His father had owned a deli and sold kosher meats to the Jewish community.

So Bucky got through those days where Steve was laid up by pretending he was a Jewish boy taking over from his father, who loved him and accepted the man that Bucky was. He tidied the place, dusted, refilled the bins on the sales floor, and made change for those who came in and made purchases. When there was nothing else to do, he sat in a pool of sunshine by the front window hand-spinning his thread from tufts of wool with a spindle.

No one screamed at him for being Romani. No one spat at him. No one accused him of thievery or witchcraft. It was pleasant almost, believing himself loved by his vater and entrusted with the family business. All the while, Steve was upstairs waiting for him to come home and cook supper, Steve, who he dreamed was his loving husband, both of them joined in the old French tradition of affrèrement that united two men or two women in a union like marriage.

Then, on the final day he would be minding the shop himself, the door opened. In walked a tall, broad man, a man who walked with a military step and bore the scars of war. He was an older man, temples winged with streaks of gray hair, and skin showing the lines of a life well-loved. His eyes were a rich shade of brown, and the smile he offered Bucky upon seeing him made them brighten.

Bucky kept the counter between himself and the newcomer and watched from the corner of his eyes as the man strolled around the shop. This man wasn't Steve, but he had an unspoken quality that kept Bucky riveted, made his body long for something he hadn't had in ages.

“Can I help you find something?” he eventually asked in German.

“My mother, she likes to sketch, and her birthday nears. I thought perhaps a sketchbook would be appropriate. And pencils.”

“We have those.” He led the customer to their display containing numerous sketchbooks of various paper thicknesses. Nearby, bushels contained pencils. Bucky wasn't entirely sure why they needed so many varieties of pencils.

The newcomer's shoulder brushed against Bucky's as they stood side by side. “What would you recommend, Herr...”

Finding himself flustered for the first time in a very long time, he blurted, “Barnes. Bucky Barnes.”

“American? Your accent doesn't sound American.”

“I was-- I served with the Americans in the war.” Why had he said that? Why was he even talking to this handsome stranger? He knew better.

“Ah. A proud history of military service. Brock Rumlow.” He offered his hand.

Bucky clasped it quickly. “Anyway, I'm not the art expert and don't actually own the shop. I'm just filling in for a friend while he recovers from an accident.” His tongue darted out to moisten his lips, and he shivered upon noticing the way Brock's gaze moved down his body. Such a bold gaze considering their semi-public location.

Brock hummed low in his throat, a sound that went straight down Bucky's spine, and Brock finally leaned forward to pick up a sketchbook and flip through the pages.

They only exchanged a few more words before Bucky took Brock's money and wrapped his purchases in brown paper. When Brock exited the shop, he turned once, allowing his gaze to linger over Bucky's body. The penetrating gaze made him want to cross his arms over his chest, made him want to protect himself from the molten want he read there, but it was brief, there and gone in a matter of seconds as Brock Rumlow stepped onto the street and went on his way.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every now and then, Steve stopped filling the shelves and looked over his shoulder at Bucky, who sat in a pool of light with his needlework. He was working on something special, a commission for a local girl's wedding, and concentration saw his tongue peeking from between his lips. Then came the soft slide of the thread and the wrinkle of the thin paper he'd mounted his piece to.
> 
> Occasionally, a cloud moved to allow streams of sunshine to cast gold highlights in the man's hair, so long now that he could pull it back into a bun. That happened, and Steve's heart seized from the sheer beauty. He didn't have enough fingers and toes to count the number of times he'd drawn Bucky in just such a position, looking content and peaceful in a way he'd never seen him.

**Rosenheim, Germany: June 8, 1952**

Every now and then, Steve stopped filling the shelves and looked over his shoulder at Bucky, who sat in a pool of light with his needlework. He was working on something special, a commission for a local girl's wedding, and concentration saw his tongue peeking from between his lips. Then came the soft slide of the thread and the wrinkle of the thin paper he'd mounted his piece to.

Occasionally, a cloud moved to allow streams of sunshine to cast gold highlights in the man's hair, so long now that he could pull it back into a bun. That happened, and Steve's heart seized from the sheer beauty. He didn't have enough fingers and toes to count the number of times he'd drawn Bucky in just such a position, looking content and peaceful in a way he'd never seen him.

Steve's heart hurt. Living with him for the past year had filled him with moments of joy and moments of extreme yearning. It had taken him a while to get used to the feelings of want, to understand that he could feel this kind of connection to a man instead of a woman.

He'd loved Peggy. He'd planned on marrying her. Were it not for his impo-- For his impotence, he would have done his duty and given her children if she'd desired them. Feeling that way about Bucky, too, had thrown him for an absolute loop. If he could, he would walk Bucky down the aisle, stand in front of a priest, and promise to love, honor, and cherish him the rest of their days.

Trouble was, Bucky hadn't once hinted at wanting that sort of relationship. Ever since he'd moved in, Bucky hadn't been on a date, hadn't mentioned anyone special, and hadn't so much as allowed his glance to linger on Steve for longer than usual. It was entirely possible he'd been falsely accused of homosexuality to warrant that pink triangle. It was also likely Bucky knew Steve was broken and wanted nothing to do with a man who couldn't perform, a man who wasn't a man.

So he said nothing. Better to have Bucky's friendship than nothing at all. He kept his peace and allowed Bucky's quiet presence to be the balm Steve needed after his years of war.

Then, on the eighth of June, bells on the door jangled, and in walked a tall, military man. He was dark, dark hair, dark eyes, dark stubble on his cheeks, and his glance went immediately to Bucky, who seemed surprised to see him, as though they had met before. Bucky set aside his needlework and rose.

“Herr Rumlow.”

Rumlow's grin was like a shark, with row upon row of cutting teeth. “You remembered my name.”

“Mother's birthday, yes? Come back for another sketchbook?”

“As a matter of fact...” The stranger's mouth curved into a blade-like grin.

“Oh, this is Steve. He owns the place.” Bucky waved a hand in Steve's direction.

Steve stepped forward and offered a hand. “Herr Rumlow.”

“Brock, please.”

Brock's handshake was firm, his eye contact unwavering. He was the sort of man whose body language screamed “Here I am. I move for no one.” His attention, though, didn't remain on Steve long. It was only a couple of heartbeats before his glance trailed over to Bucky again, and Steve did not like the way Rumlow looked at Bucky.

“Bucky took good care of me last time I stopped by.”

“I'm pleased to hear that.”

Bucky beckoned to Rumlow, who trailed along like a rat after the Pied Piper of Hamelin, and they soon had their heads together, talking lowly while examining the various sketchbooks. He couldn't hear what they said and so moved forward a few spaces to pretend to straighten the canvases.

“The sketchbook and pencils delighted my mother.”

“We still carry the same brand and weight you bought last year.” Bucky leaned forward to select a sketchbook and offered it to Brock's waiting hands.

“Can I confess something personal, Herr Barnes?”

Bucky's head dropped. A flush spread across his cheeks. “Yes.”

“I didn't just come for another sketchbook.”

“No?” Breathless now, he pressed a hand against his chest.

“No, I did not.” One step. Two steps. Brock's chest brushed against Bucky's.

“What else did you come for?”

“To invite you for dinner. Tonight, if you're free.”

“Dinner. But I--”

“Please, say you'll come. I haven't been able to stop thinking about you.” He lifted a hand. It faltered in mid-air when Bucky shied away only to drop back to his side. “It's just dinner. Then, if my attention unnerves you, I'll not bother you again.”

In a rush, Bucky said, “Okay.”

And Steve's heart fell through the floor. He'd had a chance. All this time, he'd had a chance but had never acted upon it for fear Bucky wasn't ready or didn't think about men that way. All this time, he could have, but now it was too late. Now, Bucky was having dinner with some other man.

He squeezed hands into fists. It was none of his business. Bucky was a grown man, and it was none of his business. No matter how heavy his stomach felt the rest of the day, no matter how badly his tongue wanted to cry out when Bucky, dressed in his nicest clothes, went downstairs to meet Brock, no matter how badly his jaw ached from clenching it while watching the two men disappear down the sidewalk.

Sleeping wasn't an option. Every time he tried to settle, images of Bucky laughing at someone else's jokes, holding hands beneath the table at the restaurant with another person's hand, set him to pacing. He tried to make himself happy for his friend. After all, Bucky's world was expanding. He was meeting new people and leaving the building on a much more regular basis. Those were all fantastic breakthroughs for a man who'd become a hermit.

But he wasn't doing those things with Steve.

Groaning, he threw back the covers and heaved himself from bed, deciding to use his time productively if his mind wouldn't allow him to sleep. He made himself a cup of tea and went downstairs into the studio portion of his shop to work on a commission.

For a while, he lost himself in painting. The image of a horse standing in an idyllic field took shape on the canvas, surrounded by greens and browns, and it was okay. He was okay. His infatuation with Bucky would simply have to be suppressed and pushed into the darkest parts of his heart. He could do that. For Bucky's sake.

Then he heard their voices on the stoop outside, heard someone being pushed up against a wall, and all his attempts to be okay with Bucky dating someone else came crashing down.

*

“Brock, I can't.”

He resisted the hand on his elbow when an attempt was made to steer him toward the door of an exclusive building. It looked like a lodge of some sort. Well-dressed people came and went, some with dames on their arms, others alone, shiny shoes glittering under the streetlamps.

They'd taken Brock's mint Porsche 356 into Munich, and he'd turned it over to a valet outside a private club. Any place with a valet was a place Bucky shouldn't even dream about entering.

“Why not?” Brock asked with a chuckle in his voice.

Bucky eyed him skeptically. “What I am isn't allowed to mingle with polite society.”

“What you are?”

Thinking he was being played with, he jerked his elbow free and hissed, “I'm not a toy to be made to dance for your amusement. You know very well I'm Rom. Romani don't mix with outsiders.”

“Is that what this is about? Buck--”

Hearing that name from anyone's lips but Steve's made him shudder. “Don't call me that.”

“Prickly little fellow, aren't you.”

Bucky ejected himself from Brock's personal space, twisted away from the wall he'd backed against and turned to place himself at a better angle for escape, but Brock didn't pursue. He backed off, both hands raised to indicate he meant no harm.

“Bucky, I don't care about that, and if you haven't noticed, we're on equal footing here. You're Romani, and I'm a homosexual.”

“Equal footing?” He wanted to spit in Brock's face, Brock, who was German, who hadn't been thrown into a labor camp. Who hadn't been experimented on. Who hadn't had needles shoved under his skin and been pumped full of chemicals that burned like the center of the sun.

“Bucky, wait.”

He turned to stride away, but hands on his shoulders stopped him. Brock seemed to recognize how much he disliked having hands on him at present, as he quickly jerked them away.

“You're right. Those aren't equal things. I haven't been through what you have, but Bucky, I'm not afraid to be seen with you. This is a private club I happen to be a member of. If you could find just an ounce of trust in your heart, I can show you that no one will bother us.”

Everything inside him screamed to go home, to leave Brock standing on the sidewalk, but in the end, his loneliness won out. He was tired of not having his body pressed up against another human body, so he allowed Brock to guide him inside where a doorman took their coats.

No one said anything about his lack of a tuxedo. No one stopped him to ask for identification. No one seemed to know that he shouldn't be there, so he settled into a seat at the small table they were shown to and unfolded his napkin to rest across his lap.

Once they were seated and had been served, Brock was a perfect gentleman and made it appear to outsiders that they were two friends out for a bite together. He didn't attempt contact, didn't steal touches, and seemed to respect Bucky whenever he disapproved of a particular subject of conversation.

Mostly, he was grateful Brock didn't try to bring up his life during Hitler's regime. They didn't touch on that subject in the slightest, and after a while, he found himself relaxing in Brock's presence, who had an unexpected, hyperbolic sense of humor. His stomach ached from laughing.

It was late by the time they finished dessert. Brock took the check before Bucky could even think about offering money to pay for his half. After they collected their coats, they left the club behind in favor of taking a walk through a public park. Every now and then, their knuckles brushed, but they didn't dare hold hands in public.

Eventually, they ended their night back at Brock's car. That was when Bucky took the chance and slid as close as the two bucket seats would allow, reveling in the warmth of another person's body pressed all along his side.

Brock smiled and draped an arm around Bucky's shoulders.

Once they arrived home, he was reluctant to leave the warm haven he'd created against his new beau's side. He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt so good. Certainly it had been back during the war when he would share a tent with Steve and they would huddle together for warmth.

“I had a nice time tonight,” Brock said.

“Yes, me too. Maybe--” He plucked at a loose thread on his trousers, keenly aware of the difference in the quality of their clothing. “Maybe we could do it again some time?”

“Soon. Mutter needs my help with Opa this week. She and Vater are going away for a few days, so it will be only me in the home to help him. After they return, I'll call on you again.”

A little smile played at Bucky's mouth, and he decided that if Brock could be bold enough to ask him to dinner, he could be bold enough to lean forward and press their mouths together. A warm palm flattened against his cheek, cupped his jaw to prevent him from pulling back just yet. He delighted in the scrape of Brock's stubble against his cheeks. He delighted in the intimacy of lips against his own.

The kiss ended sooner than he would have liked. Smiling, he opened his door. “Our number is listed in the directory. Call when you get the chance. I'd like to hear from you.”

That said, he turned away and headed toward the side door. He made it as far as unlocking and opening the door before Brock's warm body pressed him against the wall just inside the foyer. A grunt escaped from the sudden weight pressing into him, but to have those lips against his own again?

He opened his mouth, and the kiss turned hot and wet as their tongues tasted one another. Strong arms pulled him against a hard body, just the way he'd been dreaming since long before the Nazis had come. Threading fingers through Brock's hair allowed him to pull his beau tightly against him.

As quickly as it started, it ended, with Brock pulling away and muttering curses. “Your lips are too addicting, liebling. If I don't stop now, it will only be harder to let you go.”

“Call me.”

“I will.”

Brock stole one final kiss before returning to his car.

Bucky watched him the whole way, continued to watch even after the car had pulled away and driven off into the night. He pressed a hand against his chest to feel it flutter against his ribs. A kiss. That kiss, he would not soon forget.

Finally, he climbed the stairs and unlocked the door that led into the apartment. The scent of Steve's paints, Steve's cologne, and their mingled lives enveloped him, and he allowed his heart to hurt for a few moments over what couldn't be. He had to stop thinking about Steve that way. He was with Brock now. There should be no room in his heart for Steve, too.

*

Dating Brock became comfortable as time went on. The man visited the shop often to steal a few quick moments alone. Whenever he stopped, he always brought a gift: a new suit, an expensive watch, the keys to a brand new Volkswagen Beetle.

Bucky tried not to accept them. Really, the gifts were too much, and what would the neighbors say over a man bringing another man such exquisite things? What would they say about a Romani driving such a beautiful car? They would call him a gypsy. They would call him a thief. A Rom couldn't afford such nice things without resorting to theft, so he tried to give them back. He tried to make Brock see reason and convince him to stop bringing such expensive things.

Brock wouldn't hear of it. He wouldn't hear of his beau running errands in the beat-up old Opel Laubfrosch Steve used to pick up deliveries from the train station. The ancient thing had already broken down on them and left them stranded twice.

“I can't pick up deliveries in a Beetle, either,” Bucky said, amusement in his voice.

“Please. It will make me rest easier knowing you're safe and have a way of going places without riding the train or hitching. Plus, I thought you might drive out to visit my family estate.”

“That's-- Brock, I know you don't hold my heritage against me, but your family--”

“My family are loving people. They know I'm homosexual. I've told them all about you, and they would dearly love to meet you if you could just find that little ounce of trust we talked about in Munich. Would I take you somewhere where you wouldn't be safe?”

“No.”

“Then please trust me in this. I don't mean you must come now or even this month, but some time in the future, I want you to meet them.”

Bucky finally nodded and sneaked a kiss. They were hiding behind the stacks in the furthest part of the shop, behind giant canvases and boxes of paint brushes waiting to be rotated into sales position. It gave them just enough privacy to fold themselves together and enjoy a few open-mouthed kisses.

He laughed when Brock's stubble tickled the side of his throat.

“Stay with me tonight?”

He looked deep into Brock's eyes in an attempt to determine if Brock was asking what he thought he was. They'd been seeing each other for more than a month but hadn't been intimate yet, what with Bucky's traumatic experiences during the war. Sometimes it was hard to think of himself as a sexual being anymore, to think of sex at all without remembering the things that had been done to him.

“I know you're probably tired of waiting--”

“Hush,” Brock cut him off. “I'll wait as long as you need, liebling.”

He stood on tip-toe to steal another kiss. “Thank you for respecting me.”

A few moments later, Bucky watched him leave through the front door, a bag of charcoals and watercolors tucked beneath his arm. He wasn't aware of Steve staring at him until he glanced away from the door, and a zing of something slithered up his spine.

Steve went back to stocking shelves. They were having a spring sale to clear out some back-logged stock, so the day had been a busy one.

Bucky moved closer and said, “You don't like Brock.”

“It's not that.”

“Then what?”

“Just--” Breath filled his lungs and whooshed back out. “Be careful.”

He didn't mean to take offense, but he did, body tensing from years of being reminded he couldn't have the same sense of personal safety while walking down a street as most men. “You think I don't know about being careful? You think I haven't spent my entire life being careful? You think I need some picture of moral virtue and Aryan perfection telling me to be careful?”

Steve's hands flew into the air, and he took several steps back. “Brock is German. You're--”

“I know what I am, Rogers,” he snapped. “How dare you think you know more. How dare you-- Why can't you let me have this one good thing?”

Steve looked stricken.

And the thing was, Bucky told himself, that maybe he wouldn't have overreacted if he wasn't already thinking the same thing. Maybe he would have handled Steve's caution better if the same thoughts hadn't been plaguing him from the moment Brock Rumlow had walked through the door.

Because Brock was German. Bucky was Rom. The world was against them for being homosexual and for intermixing their heritages. If the Nazi regime were still in power, Brock and him both would have wound up in a gas chamber.

“Bucky, I didn't mean...” Steve allows the statement to trickle off.

“I know you didn't.”

Bucky disappeared into his room after fixing and eating supper and didn't come out until the following afternoon. Wordlessly, he meandered downstairs, plopped into his normal chair by the window, and started spinning yarn with his drop spindle. Later, he would dye the yarn into the vibrant colors that made up the crochet project he was working on for a customer.

*

After their blow out a couple weeks ago, Steve worked harder to give Bucky and Brock their space. The couple couldn't meet just anywhere. There were painfully few places they could have the privacy a new couple needed, so he tended to stay downstairs during the day, allowing them the use of the apartment. No matter how much it made his chest ache.

“Bucky doesn't want you,” he muttered to himself while picking his way down the stairs. They were becoming increasingly crowded with the trinkets Bucky picked up during his explorations of town, evidence of Bucky's growing curiosity and bravery. “Who the Hell would want half a man?”

He made a pot of coffee, poured himself a cup, and sat behind his easel. He'd been working on a big commission piece for a local church the past several weeks. Northern Germany was mainly Protestant or Lutheran, but the southern and western regions boasted a small Catholic majority.

The commission depicted Saint Michael defeating Lucifer and would become the centerpiece of Sankt Nikolaus Cathedral. It was undergoing a complete restoration after being bombed during the war. Until the stained glass was renovated, the picture would be a reminder that good triumphed over evil.

He'd just uncovered his work when the side door opened and closed and footsteps jogged up the secondary staircase. It was followed by the door leading into the apartment opening and then closing. The sounds of two, deep voices filtered through to his position, and his hand tightened on his palette.

It didn't matter, he tried telling himself. Bucky was a grown adult and could carry on with any relationship he chose. Steve had no right interfering. He had no claim on Bucky.

So he focused on painting. He gritted his teeth and carved thick smears of paint onto the canvas using a palette knife. The energy behind his strokes translated into a frenetic feeling unfolding on the canvas, so in the end, he wasn't entirely unhappy with it.

In fact, he stepped back after a couple hours of work and realized that was what the piece had been missing, that sense of movement and energy captured by aggressive strokes and deep ridges in the paint layers. Looking at it finally allowed that feeling of contentment to settle on his shoulders, that moment when a painting cried out “I'm done.” Doing anything more would ruin it.

And everything was fine. He was fine. Bucky was fine. He could live with that heavy feeling of wanting someone he couldn't have. That was what he told himself. It was how he reassured himself.

It worked for a while.

He sat down at the desk tucked in a back corner where he normally kept the books and went through a stack of mail awaiting him. The last thing he expected to see was Peggy Carter's delicate handwriting on an envelope addressed to him.

After unfolding the letter, he sat down with a refreshed cup of coffee to read it.

_Dearest Steven,_

_I hope this letter finds you well. When I head the news you had resigned your commission and left the country, I was startled. You, who sacrificed your body for the American people? It hardly seemed possible or characteristic of the stubborn man I'm acquainted with, the man who once told me that if you start running, they'll never let you stop._

_That, I believe, was the moment I fell in love with you. We are more alike than people give us credit, you and your unwillingness to accept no when you believe in a cause and me and my unwillingness to be treated as anything but an equal in a career that caters to men._

_Howard made me aware of the events in Sokovia, and I realize this letter comes late, but it was then I understood that you aren't running. You're standing your ground, unwilling to take part in a political atmosphere that uses your good name to commit acts of terror._

_It's what I love most about you. You might sacrifice yourself for a cause, but you will never sacrifice your ideals. You have been and continue to be the moral compass of a nation that desperately needs to stop compromising while scrabbling its way to the top of the international world._

_After all, power means nothing if that power is gained to the disadvantage of those weaker. To be a world power, we must stand our moral ground, to become a symbol to be looked up to, not a nation to be feared, and I fear we are quickly headed in the wrong direction._

_I'm glad you didn't follow me to S.H.I.E.L.D. Sometimes compromise is necessary, you see, and you would have been miserable with some of the decisions Howard and I have been forced to make. You must remain that shining star we all look up to, that proof that some things are worth the effort._

_There's something I want you to know: we may not be compatible as husband and wife, but I have and always will love you a great deal. My biggest regret in life will be that we couldn't make us work. Please know that while I ended things between us, I will always love and admire you._

_One day, I hope we may be friends again._

_Yours,  
Peggy_

Steve wiped away a bit of moisture with the back of his hand. He smiled. She was right, of course. They weren't compatible as a family unit. It was something he'd realized months after their break up. Both of them had come out of the womb with their fists raised and ready to take on the world. But they could work as friends.

So he took a sheet of paper from his bureau, uncapped his pen, and composed a response.

_Dear Peggy,_

_Receiving your letter was the highlight of my year. Your letter finds me well. I'm not sure how you got my address, but you have your ways. Currently, I'm operating an art store and roommates with Bucky Barnes. You should see how much he's grown since joining the Howlers._

_God, I remember the way you two used put your heads together and terrorize the new recruits coming into base. You were like peas in a pod. You'd be so proud of him..._

A month later, he received another letter, this one encoded with one of the their old methods back from the war. An eyebrow shooting toward his hairline, he made up the decoding chart and set to translating it onto a blank sheet of paper.

_Dearest Steve,_

_You understand that you're in love with Mr. Barnes, correct?_

_I was overjoyed to receive your letter only to discover most of the contents consisted of bragging about Mr. Barnes. Believe me, I enjoyed catching up with how he's been. One of my biggest regrets over being whisked Stateside so quickly was losing contact with him. Perhaps I'll write a letter to him, too, but I did have hopes of hearing about your life, darling._

_Loving Mr. Barnes is not a terrible thing, you understand. I have developed quite the infatuation with a waitress at a diner in New York. Ms. Martinelli is a breath of fresh air, a vivacious and precocious woman who makes me smile in spite of myself. We have been seeing each other long distance for some months, and she hopes to move to the capital soon for an acting position at a theater here._

_So your love for Mr. Barnes brings me such happiness, knowing that you have been able to move past the ending of our relationship. There were some months after we finished where I worried for you. I am the sort of person who is difficult to get over, of course. Note, my British cheekiness._

_So tell me, darling, how are you? Does Mr. Barnes return your affection? Is there hope you will soon find comfort in his arms?_

_Yours,  
Peggy_

Steve couldn't speak for the well of emotion lodged in his throat. Knowing he had feelings for Bucky wasn't the same as having someone else point it out and put a name to it. He loved Bucky. He loved waking up to him in the kitchen making the day's bread. He loved his quietness. He loved watching the man sit in a pool of sunshine crocheting or working with his lace. He loved how warm and accepting Bucky was. He loved...everything about Bucky.

Something thumped above him, and he glanced toward the ceiling. Laughter followed the noise. Brock's visits had become a regular occurrence of late. The way the man arrived looking pristine and left with his clothes askew made their activities when together particularly obvious.

And while he wished his friend happiness, he couldn't help but grieve for what Steve couldn't have, so he picked up his pen and wrote an encrypted letter back to Peggy.

_Dear Peggy,_

_Loving Bucky is easy, as easy as water tumbling over rocks. The execution needs some work, though. You see, Bucky has someone already, a German man. They've become quite affectionate. In physical ways as well as emotional._

_I couldn't come between them even if I was willing to meddle in their affair._

_So for now, my affections will remain unspoken, and I'll have to be content with that, the fact that my friend is happy and has found someone who fulfills him._

_~~Even if he weren't attached, we couldn't~~ \-- You know I'm not normal, Pegs._

_Nothing about my inability to perform has changed. I'm not a whole man. While I can experience a theoretical sort of want, I can't-- Oh Pegs, I can't have Bucky. Who would want someone like me? I'm not a man, Peggy. ~~I'm not worthy of anyone's affections when I can't--~~_

_I knew there would be sacrifices when I accepted the serum. Hell, I can't blame it on the serum for sure. It wouldn't surprise me if my impotence comes from a youth filled with health problems. Whatever the cause, the results are still the same. I am not normal, and no one could want that._

_So even if Bucky were amenable to the idea of he and I becoming something more than friends, I wouldn't be able to satisfy his carnal needs. I would try for him, of course. The way I tried with you, ~~and God, Pegs, I did try even if I couldn't consummate-~~ -_

_We try for people we love even if we don't particularly enjoy the things we're trying. Like how I took you to the opera in New York. I hate the opera, by the way. But I did it because I love you._

_I would do everything necessary to make Bucky happy, but in the end, there's one thing I can't give him, and it's the one thing most people desperately need. That intimate closeness that bonds people together. ~~I am such a failure and don't deserve--~~_

_Yours,  
Steve_

The next letter came quicker and had a return address that suggested Peggy was in Paris, probably on a mission or a conference of some kind.

_Dearest Steven,_

_Oh, you silly man. You can use the word 'sex' like an adult. I thought we had left behind this notion that I'm a lady and must be treated delicately._

_And if you continue to call yourself half-a-man, I will do something rash that involves airplanes and my hand across your face. Being unable to get an erection doesn't make you less of a man. Neither does it render you unworthy of love and affection. There are other ways of being intimate that have nothing to do with sex._

_You are impotent. You can say the word without cringing, darling. There are other people in the world like you, you understand? This is a big, beautiful world filled with countless people. You are not alone in feeling the way you do, and should you consider yourself abnormal, I must remind you that close-minded neanderthals still consider same-sex relations abnormal._

_Those people are infants, unwilling to understand the complexities of humanity and all its various colors. They are shallow creatures who have yet to crawl from the primordial soup that birthed the human species. We are the enlightened ones._

_Pay them no mind._

_Who you should pay mind to is Bucky himself. Have you considered talking about this issue with him? Of course not. You're Steven Grant Rogers. You would sooner die than bleed on those around you. Darling, I understand. I can't know, but I understand why you feel that way, but you must talk to him._

_Yours,  
Peggy_

As it turned out, he didn't have time to have a conversation with Bucky. Only a week later, Bucky packed his bags and left to meet Brock's family, who lived on a medieval estate in eastern Bavaria.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The driveway leading to Rumlow Manor was long and winding. A fog had rolled in with sunset, casting and eerie gloom throughout the forest the graveled drive cut through. Yellow glow from the headlights did little to dispel the ominous atmosphere.
> 
> His unease gained the attention of Brock, who reached over to settle a broad palm against Bucky's thigh. Brock said, “Locals like to spread stories about this forest, but none of it's true. They like to say that pets go missing if they wander into the woods, that children are lured from the safety of their homes never to return. They say something evil lurks in the woods. Her name is Bazaloshtsh, and she portends death to any who hear wailing.”
> 
> “Are you trying to frighten me?” Bucky asked with a huff.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Graphic depictions of violence. Minor character death.

**Rosenheim, Germany: August 19, 1952**

The driveway leading to Rumlow Manor was long and winding. A fog had rolled in with sunset, casting and eerie gloom throughout the forest the graveled drive cut through. Yellow glow from the headlights did little to dispel the ominous atmosphere.

His unease gained the attention of Brock, who reached over to settle a broad palm against Bucky's thigh. Brock said, “Locals like to spread stories about this forest, but none of it's true. They like to say that pets go missing if they wander into the woods, that children are lured from the safety of their homes never to return. They say something evil lurks in the woods. Her name is Bazaloshtsh, and she portends death to any who hear wailing.”

“Are you trying to frighten me?” Bucky asked with a huff.

Brock chuckled, wove their fingers together, and lifted Bucky's knuckles to his lips. “My family has lived at the heart of this forest for generations, and not a single one of us has seen evidence of what the local folk claim. They are a suspicious lot given to much fancy.”

Relief sagged his shoulders into his seat. As if he didn't have enough to be nervous about without throwing haunted woods into the mix. Meeting Brock's family made him nauseous no matter how often his beau reassured him they wouldn't care about his heritage.

He knew better. People always cared.

They rounded a bend in the gravel drive, and he could finally see Rumlow Manor, an imposing structure situated at the top of the hill. It basked in the moonlight. The bottom portion was made of red brick that looked as old as the forest around them, but brick gave way to the half-timbered style. White masonry provided a stark contrast to the black, exposed beams. Two towers topped by conical roofs added to the feeling of age.

Brock parked inside a detached garage that contained several other high-end vehicles, and Bucky felt his nerves return a thousand fold. They were rich and German. He was everything but that, and not for the first time did he regret riding with Brock instead of following in his own car.

Accepting the hand Brock offered, he climbed from the passenger seat and protested when his beau got both their bags rather than allowing Bucky to carry his own.

He hesitated, though, when it came to leaving the garage, one final protest to being dragged across Bavaria to meet people in a situation that put him at an extreme disadvantage. Fingers curled around the door handle of the car to grip.

Brock paused and looked back. Then, a boyish smile smoothing the harsh lines of his features, he galloped back, dropped their bags, and rested both hands on Bucky's hips. “Liebling, I know you're nervous, but you really have no reason to be.”

“It's easy for you to say. You are rich. And German. Who do you think the public will believe if your parents don't approve of me? Your family or the Rom?”

“Liebling, please.” Brock's lips ghosted against Bucky's cheek. “You accuse me of such awful things, and I know you don't mean to cast venom on me. I know you're angry at those who hurt you instead of me, but have I once given you cause for concern? Have I ever once made you feel inadequate?”

Reluctantly, he eased his grip on the door handle and breathed, “No. I think you're very kind, but I also think you're a German man from a proud family who can't comprehend how some of the situations you've asked me to put myself into could be dangerous for me.”

“Please, forgive me. If you're really that uncomfortable, we don't have to do this. We can leave right now. I'll get us a hotel room somewhere, and we can return to Rosenheim in the morning.”

Just the offer helped settle his nerves. Knowing Brock was willing to do that after coming all the way to his family estate eased some of the tension threatening to snap him in half. So if Brock could be so good to him, he could do this one thing for Brock.

He sighed and released his anchor. “We're already here. Let's go inside.”

Brock's face lit up, returning that boyish enthusiasm to him. He whooped, gathered their bags, and headed from the garage to approach the front door. 

It opened as they approached, revealing an older man wearing a pristine suit.

“Claus, my good man!” Brock dropped the bags just inside the door and hugged the man. “Bucky, this is our butler, Claus. He's been with the family since before I was born.”

Bucky wasn't sure if he should offer his hand. He didn't know the protocol. Plus, he wasn't certain if his touch would be welcome, but the conundrum was taken out of his hands by the arrival of a well-dressed woman who glided down the stairs.

She looked so much like Brock it was impossible to mistake her for anything but a close relative. Judging by the diamonds dripping from her throat, wrists, and fingers and the expensive silk of her gown, she could only be the lady of the household.

“Mutter,” Brock greeted. He hurried forward, collected both of her silk-clad hands, and kissed them.

“This must be your James,” she said. After extricating her hands, she moved forward to get a closer look, hands lifting to turn Bucky's face this way and that. “At least my son has deserted his family for someone attractive.”

Heat rushed into the apples of Bucky's cheeks. “Frau Rumlow.”

She turned toward her son to pierce him with a cold stare. “You are late.”

“We apologize most humbly, Mutter. There was traffic to contend with, and the weather is foul.” A boom of thunder punctuated the following silence.

“Go and dress for dinner. Vater will be expecting us promptly.”

Bucky gave ground easily when Brock settled a hand on the small of his back. Frau Rumlow's eyes were penetrating to the point he felt a chill race down his spine. There was something strange about them. It wasn't until they were part way up the grand, marble staircase that he realized he hadn't been able to see the reflection of light swimming in her eyes.

It could have been as simple as a trick of light, but there wasn't time to allow his superstitious nature to run wild with ideas, not when Brock hurried him up another flight of stairs and showed him into a grand room. A mural of Hercules and the seven-headed hydra splashed across the ceiling.

Windows opened onto a balcony, and Bucky stepped outside momentarily to take in the expansive garden at the rear of the property. The air was thick with moisture and heavy with a coming storm. He flinched as lightning snapped across the sky.

Brock's arms suddenly encircled him. “It's beautiful, isn't it.”

“Yes,” he agreed.

“Wait until you see it in the light of day, but for now, we must dress for dinner. Großvater doesn't tolerate tardiness.”

“Your vater isn't the head of household?”

“Vater is... How shall we say this? He is a lush. Mind you, his intentions are harmless, but his underbelly is weak. Mutter and Opa are the reason this household and estate are intact.”

Bucky accepted the information, and hurried through dressing in the formal suit Brock had purchased for him. The week before, they had taken it to a tailor to have it fitted properly, and he hardly recognized himself when he looked in the mirror. Between the suit and the bow tie, the hair scooped up into a bun and slicked back, he looked like he belonged. Like he wasn't some street urchin who'd spent the majority of his life with skinned knees and dirty feet.

A smile played at his mouth. It widened when Brock held him from behind again and pressed kisses to the side of his throat. The beginnings of Brock's erection rubbed up against his ass, and he was grateful they wouldn't have time. He loved Brock. Letting Brock into his body still brought back terrible memories, memories that prevented him from enjoying sex the way he should have.

Moments later, they entered a formal dining room on the ground floor. It was stunning, with a parquet floor and exposed rafters in dark wood. The dining table could easily hold twenty or more guests, but only a few place settings dotted the table.

Brock pulled his chair out for him.

He sat, and it was then he suddenly realized he had no idea what formal etiquette was expected of him. Just as he started to panic, Brock sat next to him and demonstrated what each utensil was for and how to hold his fork and knife.

They had just gotten through which glass was used for which drink when the door opened and Frau Rumlow strolled in on the arm of a man about her age. Herr Rumlow was a little overweight and had a weak chin. Brock definitely didn't inherit many of the man's looks.

Only moments later, the far door opened to admit an older man who sported a head full of white hair and an impressive mustache. He appeared aloof. His facial features were severe, and he stared at each member gathered at the table, glance lingering on Bucky.

Brock rose, so Bucky followed suit.

“I see my grandson has returned at long last,” he said. His voice was low and full of gravel.

“Business kept me away longer than expected.”

“And pleasure, I see. Will you introduce your lover, or must I do it myself.”

“This is James. James, allow me to introduce Leopold Rumlow.”

“Sir.” Bucky wasn't sure if he should bow or offer his hand.

Once the head of household sat, they all followed suit, and a flurry of servants rushed to serve the first course. No one spoke again until they'd settled into the soup. Bucky enjoyed the initial flavor. It was savory but had a bitter after-taste that lingered unpleasantly on his tongue. Still, he didn't want to be rude and ate several more spoonfuls before their host spoke.

Leopold said, “According to my research, you were not always James Barnes. You were born Iacob Bartolomeu Bărbulescu. Then, you became Bodo Baumer when your family moved to Germany.”

Bucky glanced back and forth between Leopold and Brock. “You've done research on me?”

“Did you think I would allow my grandson to set his cap upon just anyone?” A rusty laugh escaped Leopold. “You were one of Herr Doktor Zola's, correct?”

He tightened his fingers around the edge of the table. “Yes.”

“Tell me, what did he do to you in his lab? What kind of experiments did he perform?”

“Opa--”

Leopold cut Brock off. “The boy has a mouth and a tongue and can speak for himself.” He leaned closer, resting his elbow on the edge of the table to peer more closely at Bucky. “Am I making you uncomfortable, James?”

“N-no. Zola, he--” He swallowed. “He did things.” Sweat beaded his forehead. He picked up his glass of water and took several gulps, but it did nothing to wash away that bitter taste on the back of his tongue or moisten his mouth. “He injected me with something.”

“Opa, enough. Bucky?” A broad palm rubbed against Bucky's shoulder blades.

“I'm fine.”

“You should finish your soup, liebling.”

Bucky did. He picked up the bowl and swallowed down the remainder of the contents in an effort to restore some moisture to the dryness of his mouth. Moments later, dizziness made him lean against Brock's shoulder, and he whispered, “What did you--” He tried again. “What did you do to me?”

Leopold chuckled. “Poor, naive James. Herr Doktor Zola will be happy to see you.”

“What?” Alarmed, he tried to push up from the table, but his balance had deserted him. He flailed. Next thing he knew, he looked up at the ceiling from the floor, felt his body being lifted, recognized he was pressed against Brock's strong chest.

“It'll be all right. Just do everything they ask you to. Cooperate, and you'll be fine. They'll let you stay with me after Herr Doktor Zola is finished. I won't let them hurt you more than necessary.”

“You--” He licked his lips. “You knew.”

“Of course, liebling. They sent me to bring you home where you belong.”

*

Bucky woke to angry voices and his body immobilized, strapped down to a table like he had been in Buchenwald. For a moment, he thought it was a nightmare, but the nightmare was real.

“You said it wouldn't be fatal,” shouted Brock.

Zola said, “No, you assumed it wouldn't be. We must extract the serum hidden in his blood. To do that, his blood must be removed and added to the coffin. A body without blood can't survive.”

“You don't know him. I do. I know how generous and kind he is. I won't let you--”

A sharp sound echoed in the small space, like someone had smacked Brock.

Leopold's voice followed, saying, “You will do whatever is necessary. Now, go and prep the others. The sooner we begin the process, the sooner he can return to us.”

Brock came into view, his face red, one eye beginning to swell. “Liebling, you're awake.”

Bucky locked his jaw tight and refused to make eye contact.

“Liebling, I know how angry you must be, but you must cooperate. The pain will be worse if you don't. Please. Liebling, please, go along with them. Seeing you in pain tears at my heart.”

The only thing he could do was spit in Brock's face.

Pain registered in Brock's expression. He wiped the spittle away with the cuff of his shirt and whispered, “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.” After brushing a kiss across Bucky's forehead, he left.

Darkness remained, darkness and the old terror of being strapped to an examination table and left alone. The anticipation had always seemed worse than the actual procedure, he'd thought at the time. He couldn't help but return to that mindset. The one filled with fear and uncertainty, with hopelessness. 

With no way to keep track of time, he didn't know how long he remained in that black room without windows. It could have been hours. It could have been days. Time folded in on itself like bread dough, and he thought of his mutter and the comforting sounds of her making bread in the morning.

Then one night, Brock came. He leaned lower and whispered into Bucky's ear, “I can't go with you, you understand? I can't leave the grounds or they'll notice your disappearance all the sooner. Head into the forest. Keep off the main roads.”

Bucky meant to ask Brock to clarify, but he felt the restraints holding him to the table loosen. He flung himself off and backed into a corner away from his former lover, who held his hands up in surrender and moved away from the door.

It might be the only chance he got, so he rabbited. He took off into the darkness. The house was quiet. All the lights had been turned off or dimmed, so he stuck to the shadows. There were too many doors, though, and he had no way of knowing which door led back above ground.

All he could do was try them one at a time. Most looked like storage; they held scientific equipment, ammunition, guns, things kept over from the war. 

One door opened into a womb-like room, its walls painted black and covered with garish red Hydra symbols. The skull and tentacles from the war. An ornate sarcophagus rested on a raised platform in the center of the room. It was black like the walls and filled the atmosphere with ominous foreboding.

He left that room, quietly shutting the door behind him and was just approaching a set of stairs leading upward when footsteps came from behind his position. Opening the nearest door, he ducked inside. There wasn't a lock, no way to bar the entryway, so he backed up. That way if someone entered the room, he might have a chance of dodging around them.

His legs bumped up against something. A hand flashed backward to brace himself and came in contact with something wet and meaty. The metallic tang of blood filled his nostrils. It caused his heart to thunder out of control. He fumbled for something, a light switch, a torch, anything.

Shaking hands groped along the tables and finally came across something that felt familiar. He grabbed the torch and engaged the button. Light flared in the room to reveal examination tables filled with bodies in various states of autopsy.

The one thing he recognized was the deep blue of the serum Zola had pumped into his veins. Bottles of it were scattered around the room. It looked like Zola had been trying to put the serum in the people, but like so many others at Buchenwald, it had killed them.

Steeling himself, he shut down the torch and crept back toward the door. He couldn't hear anymore footsteps, so he slipped back into the corridor and scampered up the stairs onto the ground floor.

Every creak and groan made him pause, made fear pound through his skull like the hooves of the Carpathian ponies they'd owned in Romania. Every time he ducked into a niche, he swore he would wake the whole house with the sound of his labored breathing.

But there it was, the front door, the only one he knew about. Getting to it required a sprint across the open foyer, and he was half-way there when Leopold appeared out of the darkness.

He skittered to a stop, poised on the balls of his feet.

“Did you think we would be so careless as to lose you now that we have you?”

“Let me go. Please, let me go.” The exit to the Hellish house was right there.

Another rusty laugh escaped Leopold. “Adelinde.”

He turned enough to watch Brock's mother glide from a side chamber, Brock beside her.

“What do we do, liebling, with people who betray our cause?”

“We kill them,” she responded.

“Brock, restrain the boy.”

Without hesitation, Brock stepped forward, eyes downcast. He reached for Bucky.

A gunshot shattered the silence.

Hot blood sprayed across Bucky's face, and he gaped at the hole that opened in the middle of Brock's forehead, Brock, whose face froze in a look of shock as he collapsed to the marble floor. A puddle of crimson bloomed around him.

The shock quickly turned into flight or fight, and considering they were armed while he wasn't, he took off, racing across the foyer in an effort to lose himself in the depths of the house and maybe find an alternative way outside.

Adelinde had shot her own son.

He ducked around a corner, yanked open a door and sprinted across a room toward a large window.

Brock was dead.

Gasping for breath, he hefted a chair and slammed it into the glass. It didn't break. It didn't so much as crack, but he didn't have time to be stunned speechless. He turned and raced from the room.

They'd killed Brock.

His trajectory took him into the kitchen where he grabbed a butcher knife. A knife against a gun wasn't very good odds, but he somehow felt better being armed with some kind of weapon.

That was when he remembered Brock talking about a phone in Adelinde's study. If he could call for help... If his escape failed, he could at least call for help.

Brock's blood still covered his face.

He slowed his pace and ducked into deep shadows, held his breath while house servants moved down the hall looking for him. Once they passed, he skulked up the back stairs, those designed to keep the servants out of sight. Floorboards creaked under his feet, and with every step, he swore someone would come running and find him.

They didn't. They seemed to be concentrating their efforts on blocking the main exits.

Old wood groaned as he eased open the study door. He crept inside, grabbed the phone, and climbed under the desk to avoid being seen should someone step inside. Footsteps passed outside the door, and he clamped his hand over his mouth and nose to muffle the terrified sounds trying to escape.

Once they passed and left him in silence, he called Steve, the only person he could count on.

The phone rang. Once. Twice. A third time.

“Hallo,” Steve slurred.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve rips open his closet door, digs through the various junk he's collected over the years, and pulls from the back corner a bag and the shield. He hasn't thought about the shield in months, hasn't thought he would ever have cause to use it again, but there's no better reason than rescuing Bucky.
> 
> He knows Bucky left with Brock a few days ago to meet the man's family, but he doesn't know where the Rumlow estate actually is, only that it's somewhere in the east of Bavaria. So he rushes back into the kitchen with his gear cradled in his arms and grabs the phone receiver.
> 
> While yanking on his pants with one hand and the receiver cradled between his cheek and shoulder, he dials the one number he hadn't imagined he'd ever need.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Depictions of graphic violence and injury.

**Rosenheim, Germany: August 21, 1952**

Steve rips open his closet door, digs through the various junk he's collected over the years, and pulls from the back corner a bag and the shield. He hasn't thought about the shield in months, hasn't thought he would ever have cause to use it again, but there's no better reason than rescuing Bucky.

He knows Bucky left with Brock a few days ago to meet the man's family, but he doesn't know where the Rumlow estate actually is, only that it's somewhere in the east of Bavaria. So he rushes back into the kitchen with his gear cradled in his arms and grabs the phone receiver.

While yanking on his pants with one hand and the receiver cradled between his cheek and shoulder, he dials the one number he hadn't imagined he'd ever need.

Howard Stark picks up on the sixth ring, voice slurred with alcohol. “Steve! Buddy. Pal. Sweetums. What do I owe the pleasure of hearing your devastatingly attractive voice to?”

“I need some information.”

“Oh. So this is serious business. Well, shit. Lemme find my pants, will ya?”

Steve cringes and holds the phone away from his ear when something on Howard's end shatters. He sets the receiver down while yanking on the reinforced jacket and zipping it up the front. By the time he's done and picks up the receiver again, Howard has solved his issue.

“Okay, big guy. Pants are officially on. What kind of information you looking for?”

“I need a location for the Rumlow estate in Bavaria.”

“Rumlow. Rumlow. Why do I know that name?”

“They're a prominent German family who made waves by hiding escapees from the labor camps.”

“Huh. Guess not all Krauts need to be killed by fire. Hey, when were you gonna tell me you'd settled in Germany? What the Hell are you even doing there?”

“Howard. This is important. It could be life or death.”

“Right. Pants. Information. Rumlow Estate. I got ya.”

Steve doesn't actually leave until an hour later. Between waiting for Howard to get him a location and then fighting to get the Opel—Bucky's Beetle is parked at Brock's apartment—started, he's ready to breathe fire. Bucky is in danger. Someone might be killing Bucky. Every goddamn second counts.

At the last moment, he grabs his service weapon and all the ammunition he still has. Then, he loads into the old vehicle and gets on the road. It's a two hour drive. Two hours he spends with his heart in his throat replaying every second he's spent with Bucky, regretting every moment that passed wherein he didn't tell Bucky how he feels.

By the time the Opel's sputtering forces him to stop to refill the gas tank, morning has dawned, gray and overcast. The man behind the counter gives him a wary look when he enters to pay, and he's suddenly glad he wore the leather bomber jacket zipped up over his suit. Captain America is little more than a legend in Germany after the war, and he wants to keep it that way.

“You aren't from any towns nearby. Strong face like yours? I would remember,” the man says while dawdling over the antique register. “Where are you heading?”

Impatience makes Steve snappish. “The Black Forest. I'm doing some camping and hunting.”

His answer makes the shopkeeper look up, something like discomfort pinching his features. “That is not a good place for recreation.”

“How do you mean?”

“The Black Forest is filled with unspeakable things. It's filled with deadly things that crawl from the shadows and snatch people to their doom. You should not go there. You should stay away.” Real fear pales the man's complexion, and he rushes through calculating Steve's purchase.

“I'm not superstitious,” he responds.

The old man's expression turns sharp. “You should be.” He turns away to collect something beneath the counter, and when he rights himself, he takes Steve's hand, forces Steve's fingers to uncurl, and drops a cross attached to a chain in his palm. “For your protection.”

Steve wants to laugh and say he doesn't believe in God anymore. Who can maintain their faith after seeing the things he saw during the war? The depth of human depravity? How can a loving God create beings capable of so much inhumanity?

He says nothing, though, and curls his fingers around the necklace. Accepting it will get him out of the shop and onto the road again much faster than arguing, and right now, getting to Bucky is the only thing that matters. So he nods, passes over the required notes, and leaves again.

The Opel sputters to life beneath him, and he gets back on the road, the cross draped around his neck and tucked beneath the bomber jacket. Some part of him, maybe the part that will always revere his mother, can't allow him to throw it in the garbage or drop it on the floor of the vehicle.

*

He waits until dark to approach the estate.

It's raining when he arrives. The rain's coming down so hard the Opel's windshield wipers can barely keep up. He turns off onto gravel and creeps along until the manor rises out of the mist and gloom. Most of the lights are off, but he sees a shadow moving around the ground floor with a candle.

Pulling off some distance from the manor to avoid being seen, he climbs out, grabs the shield, and hangs it from the hooks built into the back of his suit. Each weapon is checked, a round chambered, and the safety switched on before he jams them into their holsters.

A bolt of lightning illuminates his surroundings. For a moment, he thinks he sees shadows moving in the forest, something big and terrifying, and he remembers the shopkeeper's words of warning. Primordial instinct honed by millions of years of predation causes his heart rate to increase, his breathing to stutter. There's something in the forest, but he swallows it down. He wasn't afraid while parachuting behind enemy lines to rescue the Howlers; he won't be afraid of ghost stories.

Breath steady, he dives into those woods to cut through them in the manor's direction. More lightning flashes, its light dimmed by the canopy of trees. He sees the shape again less than fifty yards away and moving with a clunky sort of gait, something hulking, something with an unnatural shape, something that sends awareness slithering down his spine.

Thunder and rainfall hide the sounds of his footsteps as he approaches, but he doesn't get the chance to strike. Something grabs the shield from behind. He's yanked off his feet and sent careening into a tree. By the time he regains his wits, the second shape is almost on him, close enough he can finally hear the mechanical whirr of what he thinks might be an exoskeleton.

He rolls and regains his feet, lightning reflecting from the silver cross that's come loose from beneath his jacket. The shield is thirty feet away, having been ripped from its moorings during the initial attack. 

The exoskeleton approaches. One thick arm swings at him.

He falls onto the backs of his shoulders, plants his feet against its midriff, and uses his powerful legs to propel it backward. Then, movements liquid, he slings himself toward his shield.

He doesn't quite make it.

The second exoskeleton is upon him. Mechanical fingers snag the chain the cross is suspended from.

Steve pulls away. The chain snaps. The cross falls and becomes lost amongst the dead leaves and underbrush, but it gives him the seconds he needs to get his shield, which he snaps up into position in time to absorb a blow from the second exoskeleton. 

Force sloughs off the shield. Steve gets his feet beneath him, stands, and uses the shield as a battering ram, using every ounce of serum-enhanced strength to propel him into the exoskeleton.

It stumbles backward, hits a tree, and goes down, but he doesn't have time to finish it off when the attack is pressed from behind again. He ducks around a tree. The exoskeletons try to compensate but aren't agile enough to press their attack.

Steve hooks his shield and grabs a branch to heft himself into the canopy to stay out of their reach. It's there that another burst of lightning allows him to make out the decal decorating each exoskeleton, and his heart sinks. The skull and tentacles of Hydra glare back at him.

He can't afford to stop, though, can't afford to allow shock and heartache to slow him down. Bucky needs him. Every second that passes could be Bucky's last. Bucky could be dead already.

Huffing a breath, he takes a running start and leaps from one thick tree branch to another, unharnesses his shield, and drops from above onto the shoulders of an exoskeleton. The edge of the shield crashes into the joint where shoulder meets neck. Power explodes from him like a coiled spring, and he does it a second time. Then a third, and finally, the joint gives. 

He abandons his perch as the unit's head comes off in a shower of sparks and blood that hit his face like a wave. There are humans inside the machines, but the realization doesn't stop him. It can't.

The unit he toppled still struggles to regain its feet. Steve stands over it, face covered with blood. Teeth gritting, he brings the shield overhead and uses it to hack off the downed Hydra's head. They should have been killed during the war. Hydra should have died with Red Skull.

Hooking the shield to his back, he marches to the edge of the forest and crouches to get a better look at what he's dealing with. The place looks quiet. There aren't any guards actively patrolling the exterior, Hydra trusting instead to the agents deployed in the forest.

Something moves on the house's turrets when a fox darts from the woods in the direction of the estate's barns. Bullets pepper the ground, leaving pock marks in their wake.

Motion activated turret guns, he guesses. Easy enough.

He unhooks the shield again, digs his heel into the muddy ground, and sprints from the treeline. Gunfire flashes in the darkness. Bullets ping against the shield. One ricochets off the edge of the shield and buries in his thigh, but he ignores the jolt of pain. If he stops, the guns will pin him down, and he won't get to Bucky in time.

*

“Sir, an intruder has been spotted.”

Bucky fights through the haze of whatever drugs they've pumped him full of, and a crooked smile cocks his mouth. “You're fucked now,” he slurs.

“The Beetles will stop any intruders from reaching us,” claims Leopold.

“We've lost contact with two Beetle operatives already, and he's close enough to have activated the gun turrets. Sir, he carries the shield.”

Leopold curses. “How? He hasn't been active in years.”

Bucky grins. He licks blood from his lips and teeth and rasps a chuckle. “Who the fuck do you think I am? Your research didn't tell you that? You think Captain Rogers'd let one of his Howlers down?”

Leopold barks another curse. “Stop him. I don't care how many men it takes. Keep him from this room until the ritual is complete. Do you understand me? Our lives are nothing compared to His.”

“Yes, Sir.” The henchman dashes from the chamber.

“You're not going to stop him,” Bucky says. “He will find you and make you scream, and that thing in the sarcophagus will still be dead in the morning.”

He gets backhanded for his efforts.

*

Huddled beneath the roof of the veranda, Steve removes his bomber jacket and cuts one of the sleeves into strips, using them to create a makeshift tourniquet to stem the blood flowing from his thigh. The serum will close the wound quickly enough, leaving the bullet inside.

The storm continues overhead, lightning and thunder near-constant distractions that deafens any sounds of approaching danger, but it also dampens his own movements. He's already tried the front door. Of course it's reinforced. The front windows, too.

Bailing out from his cover means the turret guns pepper the ground around him as soon as he emerges. He holds the shield overhead, ears ringing from the sounds of lead impacting against the vibranium. The results of circling the house are the same. The windows are unbreakable. The doors impenetrable.

He's about to do something rash when he glances up through the gloom and spies a second floor balcony. The door leading onto it appears to be ajar. He can't be sure, but it's the best lead he's got, so he scales the side of the house, finding foot and handholds on the windows and exposed beams of the timber framing.

The rain has washed the blood from his face by the time he leaps over the balcony railing. Relief surges through him upon finding the door unlatched. Whoever was last on the balcony didn't close it all the way while reentering the house.

First thing he recognizes inside the dim room is Bucky's suitcase. The other, he presumes belongs to Brock, who will be swallowing his own toes by the time Steve's done with him once he finds the prick.

Someone fires a weapon the second he emerges from the bedchamber. He ducks back around the door for cover and returns fire, but the Hydra agent is holding ground in a narrow alcove that makes it impossible for Steve to get a good shot.

He holsters his weapon, brain working through the calculations on the fly as he readies the shield. It leaves his fingers like gossamer, ricochets off one wall, shatters the mirror opposite the alcove, and careens with the agent's face. The edge embeds in the wall, having severed the top half of the agent's head, whose body slumps to the carpeting.

Steve bails out of his position and races to collect his shield. The hallway deposits him near an ornate staircase where he can go up or down. The upper floors are more vulnerable to attack, so he jogs down and exits onto a mezzanine covered with marble flooring. 

Several yards away, he finds the grand staircase that will take him to the foyer, but as soon as he heads in that direction, he comes under fire again from several different directions. The shield is immediately in hand again to cover his front, but he doesn't move fast enough and takes a bullet to his ribcage.

Pain flares. Hot blood releases as though juice spurting from a cooked sausage.

There's nothing he can do about it, so he keeps moving. If he stops, they'll pin him down. If he stops, Bucky might die. He doesn't stop.

He takes a running leap and launches himself from the railing surrounding the mezzanine. Then he's sailing, legs kicking, shield in front of him, vertigo twisting his stomach into a mess of knots. 

He seems to hang there for hours before wind rushes around him as he falls. The shield absorbs some of the impact, and he rolls when he lands, coming up in a crouch and ducked behind the shield. Bullets ricochet from the vibranium. Someone grunts and slumps to the marble.

As soon as there's a pause in gunfire, he takes off to get beneath the mezzanine level. That will nullify the angle of some of the shooters and buy him some time. 

A Hydra agent greets him.

He lowers the shield long enough to kick his enemy square in the chest, sending the agent through a nearby wall. Then he twists and slams the shield into the face of another. The third, he drops by whipping a sidearm from its holster. The flash-fire of his gun is muffled against the agent's jacket.

*

“He's inside the manor, Herr Rumlow.”

“Stop him, you fools! Is everyone in this base incompetent? Adelinde,” he snaps.

She nods once, gathers a gun from a nearby table, and leaves the room.

Bucky laughs. “You think he'll hesitate to shoot a woman? You're wrong.”

“Will someone gag him and shut him up? I have to concentrate.”

A technician hurries forward to stuff his mouth full of cloth, but Bucky's eyes still crinkle with humor. Leopold is losing ground. He's losing his concentration, and that can only be a good thing. 

At least that's what he tells himself until a technician lifts him from the examination table he's been strapped to and lays him out in a divot in the concrete. His head is pointed toward the sarcophagus. Another person has been positioned similarly on either side of him, but they're both clearly deceased.

The technician lifts his left arm over his head and slides his hand and wrist inside a metal receptacle. It's attached to a device that's connected to the sarcophagus, and while Bucky has no idea what they're about to do to him, he can categorically say it won't be pleasant.

His assumptions are proved correct. The device clamps around his flesh, and pain lances as something pierces his wrist. All attempts to tug himself free fail, and panic rises to choke him. The hot rush of blood leaving his veins makes him nauseous. It's then he remembers Zola bleating about transferring his blood into the sarcophagus.

They're going to kill him to awaken something evil, and Steve might not make it in time to save him. He might die without telling Steve how much he loves him. Why do such life-changing revelations always wait until the last minute to occur, he wonders.

*

Things have quieted down upstairs as Steve creeps through the ground floor looking for any way into the lower levels. There must be lower levels. No way do they guard a place so heavily unless there's something major taking place.

The door creaks as he pushes it open to reveal a library. He's about to back out to continue the search when he hears a muffled sob coming from near an imposing desk. He approaches on silent steps, gun at the ready, shield on his arm.

Before he can deliver a killing blow, a woman emerges from under the desk with both hands raised in surrender. Tears track down her cheeks. Terror widens her eyes, and she cries something unintelligible, words slurred by her sobs.

“Where is he?” he demands while seizing her by the front of her dress.

“I don't know. I don't know!” she cries.

“You expect me to believe that?”

“Vater, he--” Her breath hitches, and she gulps down air. “Vater has gone mad. He's raving about hydras and vengeance. Please, don't hurt me.”

His grip loosens. He may be angry. He may be in considerable pain, but he's not a murderer of the innocent, and it's entirely possible Rumlow would keep his daughter entirely in the dark.

Just as he's getting ready to release her, her hand moves.

Steve reacts quickly enough to swat her hand aside and locates the gun hidden in the pocket of her dress. He liberates it and tosses it across the room, face hardening.

“Would you like to start again?”

Something like real fear flashes across her visage only to be hidden behind steel. “Hail Hydra.”

He shoves the barrel of his gun into her mouth to stop her from clamping her teeth together and releasing the cyanide into her system. “Ah. Ah. It won't be that easy this time.”

Short a set of pliers and lacking time, he does the only thing he can think to do and punches her in the jaw hard enough she chokes and spits out several teeth. Blood dribbles down her chin, and she cries out and slumps in his grasp, but he holds firm.

Only when he's sure he's gotten rid of the cyanide tooth does he remove the barrel from her mouth. “This is how it's going to work. I'm going to ask you where Bucky is, and you're going take me to him. Failure will result in unpleasantness.”

“You don't torture people,” she slurs through her abused mouth.

“Don't make the mistake of assuming I'm the idealistic man who took part in the war. Now, I'm going to ask one more time about Bucky's location.”

*

He's sluggish and cold. The sickening sensation of blood leaving his body continues, but he's lost his will to fight when fighting does nothing but add to his current misery.

Bucky doesn't want to die. There's too much he still wants to do, but the end looks unavoidable. If he can slip quietly into the afterlife, he'll go with only one real regret: not knowing what it feels like to be held in Steve's arms, not allowing Steve and him the chance to be something more than what they are.

A gunshot from the corridor outside is enough to momentarily pull him from the blackness. Then, the door bursts open. It's not Steve. It's Leopold and Zola, both racing into the room and moving to bar the door. Seeing them rattled and on the verge of panic makes him chuckle.

“Told you,” he whispered.

“There must be a way to speed this up,” cries Leopold.

“The arteries of the wrist are delicate, Herr Rumlow. They are thinner, and blood leaves the body more slowly. Had we designed the machine to puncture the brachial or femoral arteries, the process would have been faster. No one knew Captain Rogers would be a problem.”

Bucky chuckles again. “Doomed by your own lack of foresight. Captain Rogers is always a problem.”

“Didn't someone gag him?”

*

Steve delivers a double-footed kick to the exoskeleton standing between him and the door barring him from Bucky. He recoils and lands on his back but immediately leaps to his feet. The kick throws the exoskeleton backward into the door, shredding one of the hinges with its weight.

He rips open the metal faceplate on the machine and shoots the driver in the head before turning his attention toward the door. The shield comes easily to hand again. Putting his weight into it shifts the bullet lodged against his rib and sends peals of pain tearing through his nerves.

He tries again, each moment making him more desperate than the last. Bucky is dying inside this chamber, being bled dry to feed Hydra's need for world domination. Any pain Steve experiences is nothing in comparison to what Bucky's going through.

Stepping back gives him a running start, and finally, the door comes off its hinges. It resists being flung inward by a metal bar bracing it from the other side, but another kick knocks it off kilter enough for him to pull it free. Finally, he steps through the wreckage and claps eyes on Bucky, who's resting in a body-shaped divot in the concrete, arm over his head and inserted into one of Zola's infernal devices.

Speaking of Zola. The piggish little man cowers behind Leopold Rumlow's breadth. Rumlow holds his hands above his head in surrender.

“I've about met my quota of kills today. Lucky for me, I have two bullets left, one for each of you.”

“Come now, Captain Rogers. Everyone knows you won't shoot unarmed men.”

“You know, everyone keeps saying that about me lately. I'm wondering what their basis for that assumption is? See, there are unarmed civilians. Then there are Hydra agents hiding behind their raised hands thinking it will buy them an ounce of mercy.”

“You're the American symbol of honor and virtue--”

Steve doesn't have time for a villain speech. Bucky looks weak and pale, his lips colorless, so he cuts off Rumlow by putting a bullet between his eyes. The man dies with a look of shock forever frozen on his face. Zola cowers in the corner, and Steve ignores him for the time being.

Bucky and nine other people are arrayed around a black sarcophagus, their heads pointing toward it and each attached to by a central ring of metal, some sort of device that's transferring their blood into the coffin. Inside the coffin, he finds a body. It's partially rotted, the only thing recognizable about the corpse being the red skull naked of any flesh.

Disgust twists his stomach, and he glances in Zola's direction. There aren't words. Nothing can truly express the lack of human empathy necessary to perform the sorts of experimentation Zola has meted out to people like Bucky and the others.

So the first thing he does is crouch beside Bucky and cup a broad palm against the man's cheek. 

Bucky is cold. Dark lashes flutter, and he opens pale eyes, a lopsided smile showing off bloody teeth and colorless gums. “Steve,” he murmurs.

“Hey, Buck. I'll get you out of here, okay? Just hang on a little longer.”

He grasps Bucky's wrist and attempts to remove it from the machine, but said machine holds fast. He tries again, but the attempt makes Bucky cringe and beg for him to stop. So he turns his attention to the metal enclosing his hand.

“Steve, I have to tell you--”

“No,” he snaps. “No deathbed confessions. You're going to be fine. Just give me a minute to figure this out, yeah?”

“Behind you!”

Steve turns and raises the shield on instinct in time to interrupt Zola's attack. The little man comes at him with scalpel that clangs against the shield. After halting the attack, he swipes his leg against Zola's to take him to the ground, but Zola falls wrong, winds up cracking his skull on the corner of a table, and when he collapses to the floor, blood pools around him.

Curses erupt from him. He rushes over to check for a pulse. It's not that he wants Zola to live. On the contrary, the man has proven repeatedly he can't be trusted with life. No, he just killed the only person who knows how to free Bucky from the infernal device.

“Fuck!” he shouts and hurries back to the metal ring Zola's victims are attached to. 

He uses the shield. It comes down on the metal with a resounding clang, but whatever they've made the device from, the shield can't break it.

Stunned, he tries again. And again. And again. Sweat beads his brow. Heat fires his cheeks. Tears slide down his face. Something in him snaps, and he throws his weight into the sarcophagus, anything to disrupt whatever is draining Bucky's blood.

“Steve.” Bucky's voice is little louder than a whisper. He says it again, louder this time.

Steve falls to his knees beside Bucky.

“Steve, you have to--” He pauses for breath and licks his lips. “Take the corpse from the sarcophagus. That way Red Skull can't come back.”

He wants to scream and rage that removing Red Skull won't stop the damn thing from draining Bucky, but the steel and iron in Bucky's eyes make him move. Bucky, the noble bastard, would sacrifice any chance of living to stop Red Skull from coming back to life.

Setting aside the shield, he steps up to the sarcophagus. The second he touches it, the Skull lets out a terrible shriek that rakes down Steve's nerve endings. Empty eye sockets stare at nothing and everything, but the damn thing doesn't seem to be able to move of its own accord yet.

Steve slips an arm beneath the Skull's shoulders, the other beneath its knees, and lifts. Waves of crimson rush from them both as he lifts the corpse free. It's thick and viscous, and the overwhelming iron of its scent chokes him. He doesn't bother with dignity, just allows the corpse to crumple to the ground once he drops it.

Then he rushes back to Bucky, whose eyes have drooped closed again.

“Bucky.”

There's silence but for the slosh of blood inside the sarcophagus slowly settling to stillness.

“Please don't do this to me. You can't die. I haven't been able to tell you how much I love you.”

The fingers of Bucky's free hand tighten around Steve's fingers, and his eyes open. “You do?”

His heart flips, and he chokes back a sob. “So much. So, so much.”

Ragged breaths smooth, but something terrible and dark clouds Bucky's expression. “You have to--” He licks his lips again. “Cut my hand off.”

“What?”

“This thing will drain me dry if you don't cut my hand off.”

Steve can't swallow a sound of protest, but Bucky has a point. Sacrificing his hand to save his life makes logical sense, but everything inside him rebels at the idea. Bringing himself to do that, to mutilate the man he loves... But Bucky's slipping away. He'll die if Steve doesn't do something.

Eventually, he nods.

There isn't time to go find pain killers or sedatives or even surgical equipment judging by the pallor of Bucky's complexion. Steve kneels next to him with the shield clutched in both hands.

He looks to Bucky once more. “I love you, Bucky.”

“Punk, just cut my hand off already,” he exclaims with a forced grin.

“Don't look. Close your eyes, schatz.”

Bucky does and turns his head away from Steve.

Steve takes a deep breath but hesitates at the last second. He's going to-- He has to-- Jaw tense, he brings the shield down with as much strength as possible. It doesn't stop until it clangs against the concrete beneath Bucky's wrist.

Then, sobbing, he tosses the shield aside, frees a sidearm and fires off two shots into the ceiling. The barrel hot, he then presses it against the severed stump to burn the exposed vessels closed.

A scream erupts from Bucky, who then passes out.

*

The first time Bucky wakes, he thinks he's laid out in the back of the Opel. The vehicle trundles over ill-kept roads, and each movement makes him think he's dying. Makes him open his arms to embrace unconsciousness almost immediately after waking.

*

The second time, he finds himself in a hospital room. He's swaddled in warm blankets, and they're giving him a transfusion to replenish the blood he lost to Hydra's schemes.

When he moves, Steve stands from a nearby chair and hurries over to check on him. That handsome face is ashen. Color blooms beneath his eyes, attesting to his lack of sleep. He looks exhausted, and his thigh and ribs are swathed with bandages.

Bucky clears his throat and tries to sit up higher in bed, but Steve prevents him. His voice cracks when he says, “You're hurt.”

“Nothing serious. I've already been treated and released. It's you we're worried about.”

The question of who Steve refers to when he says “we” is answered when Peggy enters. Her eyes brighten upon noticing he's awake, and she eagerly takes the hand he holds in her direction.

“I tried to tell Steve you're full of too much spit and vinegar to expire on us, darling.”

“It's good to see you, Pegs.”

“Likewise, though I wish the circumstances were different.”

“Howard?” he asks.

“He's finishing up with that nasty business at the Rumlow estate. Red Skull's body was incinerated and his ashes scattered.” She squeezes his hand. “Now, I suspect the two of you have a great deal to talk about, so I'll give you some privacy.”

“We'll see you again before you leave, won't we?” asks Steve.

“Certainly. One mustn't give up the opportunity to have tea with her two closest friends.”

Bucky shifts, trying to find a more comfortable position in bed, but comfort is a relative thing. His stump aches like nobody's business, and he can't bring himself to look at it just yet. He chooses instead to look at Steve's face.

Steve pulls a chair over and sits quietly beside him, their fingers tangled together.

“Is it true what you said in that place, or were you just--”

“Let me stop you before your finish that question, Buck. Every word I said is true. I can't tell you exactly when it happened, but living with you this past year? It's been the best year of my life. I want to keep doing that. For as long as you'll have me, but there's something I have to tell you first.”

“What?” rasps Bucky, and when Steve allows the silence to stretch too long, Bucky cups his cheek. “Dràgo, you can tell me anything.”

“I'm not a real man.”

Bucky's brow furrows. “I don't understand.”

“I can't-- I can't satisfy you.” Then, heaving a heavy breath, Steve admits, “I'm impotent. I can't experience sexual pleasure or get an erection.”

“Oh.” He drops his glance to look at where their fingers are joined. “Steve, that doesn't make you not a real man. It's true that among my people, you would be looked down upon for not having a wife or children, but I am not normal either.”

Some of the tension leaves Steve's body.

“I can't either. I mean, I can. Rumlow wanted me to, and I let him inside me to keep him happy and satisfied, but they did things to me in that labor camp. I don't think my body healed normally. Either that or the memories are too powerful.”

“Then you don't mind that I can't-- do that with you?”

“No. I want you either way.”

Something washes across Steve's expression, then, some softness or relief that makes him look open and overjoyed. Bucky doesn't think he's ever seen Steve look so open before.

“Schatz,” Steve sighs. “Sweetheart, do you mean that we can be close? That you want to try to be close with me the way people in love are?”

Bucky releases a breath and leans closer to quickly press his lips to the apple of Steve's cheek. He finally breathes, “I love you, too. I'll need time to process, to-- Brock was complicated. He didn't want them to kill me, but he still took me to them. I need time to--”

“Of course. Whatever you need, schatz. However much time you need to heal.”

Wonder warming his chest, he reaches up to trace fingertips across Steve's cheekbone, fingers Steve catches in his palm and kiss one at a time. After, still feeling worn from his ordeal, Bucky snuggles down and allows himself to drift into a healing sort of sleep, finally feeling safe enough to relax his guards knowing Steve will watch over him.


	8. CHapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve stops outside the front windows of their little shop and looks in on Bucky, who sits at his usual table, his wares arrayed around him in bright splashes of color and the glitter of glass beads. He holds a needle in his remaining hand, and the necklace he's tatting stretches between an embroidery hoop that's locked into place by a stand Bucky made with his help. He supports the piece with his healed stump and deftly wields his needle and thread.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who read, commented, and left kudos. I write because I love writing. I write in the Avenger and Captain American fandom because the characters mean so much to me, but your support is the really awesome icing on a really awesome cake.
> 
> Also, thanks to the great people who moderated [A Stucky Scary Bang](https://stuckyscarybang.tumblr.com/post/164937008385/the-stucky-scary-bang-is-a-horror-themed-prompt) . Go check out the collection. There are a ton of spooky and spine-tingling stories being submitted for it.

**Rosenheim, Germany: July 4, 1953**

Steve stops outside the front windows of their little shop and looks in on Bucky, who sits at his usual table, his wares arrayed around him in bright splashes of color and the glitter of glass beads. He holds a needle in his remaining hand, and the necklace he's tatting stretches between an embroidery hoop that's locked into place by a stand Bucky made with his help. He supports the piece with his healed stump and deftly wields his needle and thread.

They adapted over the past year to Bucky's continuing struggle with living an independent lifestyle. At first, Steve threaded needles for him. Then Howard, who visits occasionally, created a vise Bucky can clamp the needle into while he threads with his remaining hand.

What he knows is that time has been good to them. The shop is productive. A new sign hangs over the front door that reads “Rogers and Barnes: Fine Arts and Tatting.” They've been so successful they're ahead on the mortgage and are able to hire a local artist both of them are comfortable with to oversee the shop when neither of them is available.

They've learned a lot about each other, too. Bucky opened up about his past, about how he was abused by his father and elder brothers for his homosexuality. He even opened up a little about his experiences during the labor camp, how the Romani court of law called the kris officially banished him from his community, leaving him adrift and without any sort of support system.

In turn, Steve shared stories about his youth and growing up sickly in a tenement in Brooklyn with only his mother, their apartment sublet to four different people to make the rent low enough they could survive. The hardest thing for Steve to talk about—and he did so on a cold, autumn night after waking from a nightmare—is the experiment that gifted him this miracle of a body. He should be grateful, he knows, but sometimes he doesn't feel like himself. Sometimes, he looks in the mirror expecting to see that little guy full of gasoline and turpentine, ready to fight the world to prove himself worthy.

Bucky glances up from his work suddenly, and a bright smile lights up his expression. He weaves his needle into his work, rises, and beckons Steve inside.

As soon as he enters, Bucky pulls him behind the nearest shelving unit to greet him with a kiss which Steve receives with a hum of satisfaction. He cups his lover's cheek, delighting in the rough stubble there, and deepens the kiss.

When he pulls back, he takes a moment to look at Bucky. It's a face he's a seen a thousand times, one he's woken to in the same bed for months now, but he can't get over the naked beauty he sees there. He can't stop the overwhelming sensation of falling every time he looks into his lover's eyes. He doesn't want to. Hopes it never goes away, hopes he never takes Bucky for granted.

“We're supposed to meet Peggy and the others at the park soon, so you should clean up, so we can close the shop for the rest of the afternoon.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” Bucky responds. He gives a cocky little salute and does as suggested.

Germany, naturally, doesn't celebrate the American holiday of Independence Day, but there's a significant percentage of American servicemen and their families who've made Bavaria home after the war, so they all get together every Fourth of July to hold their own little celebration in a nearby park. Also, it's Steve's birthday, and Peggy showed up last Wednesday out of the blue and took over planning the festivities to include what's been described by Gabe as “the mother of all cakes.”

Dressed casually, they take Bucky's Beetle—the space the old Opel usually occupies is currently empty since it's in the shop for some much-needed pampering—and park in line with the vehicles of other guests. A group has already gathered near picnic tables laden with food and drinks.

Dum Dum, the tallest of the Howlers, is the first to spot them and bellows a greeting, arm over his head to wave frantically to get their attention. As though they can't already see the giant doof with his fire engine hair and trademark bowler hat.

Bucky hurries forward, not embrace Dum Dum, but to throw his arms around Gabe. They became close during the war while Bucky was learning English. Gabe was often times the only person Bucky could speak to until they all made an effort to learn a smattering of German to help him along.

Morita brings Steve a drink which he accepts with much aplomb, and they all gather around a picnic table catching up. The Howlers have reconvened as a military group under the leadership of Dum Dum, and they have plenty of tales to tell about being shipped around the world to snuff out injustice. They raise their glasses and proclaim they fight in the name of Captain Steve Rogers, who taught them all to pull on their big boy shorts and do what's right for a change.

Steve's cheeks are hot by the time they finish their impromptu homage. 

Regardless of his exclamations they needn't have gotten him gifts, they all turn up with one: a bottle of French wine from Dernier, a box of Cuban cigars from Monty, the latest versions of the detective series he's been reading from Gabe, fine silver cufflinks from Morita, and from Dum Dum, a knife, the handle of which is inlaid with mother of pearl.

He throws his arms around each of them, and the revelry continues until he notices Bucky is absent. Finding him isn't difficult. He's standing a dozen yards away watching another group of people having a gathering in the public park. The only thing that makes them stand out are the vibrant skirts and scarves of the women and the lively music the men perform.

He sidles up beside Bucky until their shoulders bump together. “Everything okay?”

Bucky nods. He opens his mouth to say something but closes it again without speaking.

In a lower tone, one laced with concern, he asks, “What is it, schatz?”

“They're Romani. Not Vlax-Romani like me but Sinti.” Something pained crosses Bucky's features.

“Do you want to say hello?”

He shakes his head, but it's clear he's indecisive.

“You should talk to them. I mean, if you're comfortable with that. Family's important. Maybe they're not the same as the people you lost. No one can be, but there's still a connection there. You're still bound by certain traditions and heritage.”

“I don't think...” Bucky trails off.

“It's okay. No pressure. Whatever you decide, schatz.” Part of him aches. He can't press himself into the man beside him, can't offer physical comfort the way he wants to when they're in public. All because the world is close-minded, but he can give Bucky some space to consider his options.

“We'll be over at the picnic tables no matter what you decide.”

With a final press of his shoulder against Bucky's he turns away to head back to the Fourth of July celebration. Peggy and Howard have arrived by that point carrying a tremendously oversized cake. That thing looks like it could feed an army. Maybe it might have to.

He hugs Peggy, shakes Howard's hand, and like the rest of them, flees in terror when Dernier brings out bags of fireworks for after the sunset. Dernier waggles his eyebrows.

Eventually, Steve glances over where he last saw Bucky, but he's not there. Rather, he's in the process of greeting some of the Sinti, who seem to welcome him with an unexpected warmth. They aren't just bonded by heritage, after all. They aren't just Romani. They're bound by the same persecution, similar struggles, and loss, so much loss.

He grins and turns back to pay attention to something Peggy's saying.

The food is fantastic. The cake is phenomenal. Dernier's fireworks don't disappoint, but the best part about his birthday? When Bucky returns to stand beside him, there's a new lightness to his shoulders from having reconnected with Romani people.

Everything'll be all right, he suddenly realizes. They're happy. War and pain don't need to define them.


End file.
